All that is solid (2022, revised 2024)
Flute Ensemble
3 picc 6 fl 3 afl 3 bfl 1 cbfl
ca. 5 minutes
Composed as part of the collaboration between Millennium Composers Initiative and Lawrence University Flute Ensemble.
Premiere: Lawrence University Flute Ensemble, Erin Lesser (director), and Michael Clayville (conductor) at Lawrence Memorial Chapel on November 1, 2024.
Program Note
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
— Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx (trans. Samuel Moore)
“All that is solid melts into air”, Samuel Moore’s translation of Marx’s words in the Communist Manifesto, carries for me an ocean of dimensionalities that are simultaneously philosophical, political, and poetic.
What does it become when it encounters music—voices?
Emerging as whispers on the verge of inaudibility and illegibility, the flutists' voices transform into a substantial singular entity, entangled in inner discord yet seemingly indestructible in its solidity, until that final utterance gushes into the air, reverberates throughout space, and dissipates.