Idioms

Idioms, for piano and string quartet, was written in 2018 for the Graham Sommer Competition for Young Composers. This piece is dedicated to my former teacher, Belgian composer Luc Brewaeys, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 56.

The title Idioms comes from Luc’s penchant for idiomatic phrases, puns, jokes, and expressions in a multitude of languages. I’ve translated this idea of idiomatic language into musical idioms (and perhaps accents as style) to create a piece that teems with references, quotations, and allusions. The references to Luc’s music are to his 8th symphony as well as an early piano piece, Pyramids in Siberia. His 8th symphony was left unfinished, as Luc was unable to complete the work, exhausted from battling cancer. Pyramids in Siberia was chosen because it suggests an alternate reality and alternate history, which I invoke to conceptualize the consolidation of many disparate musical elements in this piece and others.

Idioms begins with a reworking of the opening phrase of Luc’s 8th Symphony and then moves back in time, forming historical links. First there is a Debussy prelude, for which Luc made a well-known orchestration. Debussy gives way to Wagner, Wagner to Beethoven, Beethoven to Haydn, and Haydn transforms into some type of imaginary Croatian folk music. The pitch materials are then stripped down to noise, a reference to Luc’s first symphony. The piece ends by lingering on the final harmonies of Luc’s unfinished 8th, concluding on a long F#, which pushes to the right onto an otherwise blank page of the score, suggesting the possibilities of the unfinished work.