Cantus
2.2.2.2-3.2.2.1-timp.-2pc.-hp.-strings | 2021 | 15’
Winner, Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize (Eastman School of Music)
Past Performances:
Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, cond. Grant O’Brien. “Storytellers.” Kodak Hall, Eastman School of Music, Feb. 23, 2022.
Eastman Philharmonia (reading), cond. Maurice Cohn. May 5, 2021.
Cantus is a work for orchestra set in four movements, played attacca.
The work's title draws connections to Gregorian Chant and all the images therein—especially life and eternity. The title is also an oblique reference to Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten; much of the work was composed in reaction to the untimely death of a person close to the composer.
Like the Pärt, the work places clear melodic ideas in changing contrapuntal arrangements, although it does so in a vastly different way. The concept of a "cantus" is also expanded throughout the work's four movements, becoming, for instance, a short motif in the scherzo- like second movement.
In the third and fourth movements, recollections and re-examinations of earlier music play key roles in bringing the arc of the work to a close. The piece ultimately ends enigmatically, fading into an uncertain conclusion that is nevertheless befitting of the emotions explored.
