Loneliness in a beautiful place
a landscape for thin places no. 4
string orchestra version - 2016, ca 9-10 minutes
Cover art by Angela Bermúdez.
Premiere by USC Thornton School of Music Musicians, conducted by Patrick O’Malley:
excerpt 2: fast and flowing
excerpt 1: slow and passionate
Video Performance by Delirium Musicum:
Awards
Delirium Musicum Call for Scores Winner
Sioux City Symphony “Composer of the Year” Winner
ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award Winner
Instrumentation - strings
vlns I+II, vla, vcl, db - (divisi a 2 only)
Program Note
Beautiful places and spaces are inherently mysterious. It is this sense of mystery that imbues these places with a deep calm, especially when alone. The music in Loneliness in a Beautiful Place creates a landscape of questions, with voices that hold their notes (especially trills) for a very long time, before discovering some sort of melodic answer. A chorale hints at something deeper. Near the end the music embraces the landscape, literally scaling up a mountain of notes, before returning to meditation. It is my intention here not to depict the landscape in music, but rather the sense of exploring it.