While I did not grow up on a farm, I have spent much time at our family farm in Southern Indiana. There are some windchimes there on the front porch, and no matter where you are on the rather large property, you can always faintly make out the sound of those chimes carried on the wind. I emulated this using a simple motif: up a fourth, down a fifth. It occurs prominently in the first movement as the main melody, but it appears in many different forms throughout the whole piece. Wherever you are in the piece, that motif is never far away. While the music doesn’t have distinctly ‘American’ traits in the vein of Copland – at times it sounds more Impressionistic than American – it still evokes a nostalgic feeling in me. Of course, America is well known for the beautiful mountains in the West or the beaches on the East Coast, but to me America is just as beautiful in the wide-open plains and cornfields of the Midwest. It’s a subtler kind of beauty, and I wanted to capture this subtlety in music.
Wind Quintet; ~11:00
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