Vignettes on a Premonition
Faculty Mentor
Jonathan Middleton
Document Type
Creative Work
Start Date
9-5-2023 5:20 PM
End Date
9-5-2023 6:00 PM
Location
Art Building Gallery
Department
Music
Abstract
with Gloria Miller
Vignettes on a Premonition is a collection of short pieces for cello duo, inspired by an unpleasant experience involving a spider and relational conflict. This experience instigated a dream which held significant meaning to the composer, warning of a painful ending and revealing the inward source of conflict. The Prelude was written using 2 different 12-tone rows and the rhythms were chosen by chance through the rolling of dice. The themes from Vignette I: “Arachnid” derived from 2 matrices made from the tone rows in the Prelude. This vignette describes the experience with the spider, twisting and turning gently in the beginning, as the spider crawls along the wall, and ending with one cello playing double stops in a very high register and the other cello adding rhythmic interest, while using ponticello technique to create a scream-like sound. Vignette II: “Shadow” is a variation of one of the themes from Vignette I, but takes a slower pulse since it is an exhalation of the preceding emotional buildup. This vignette transitions directly into Vignette III: “Nightmare,” which explicitly describes the resulting dream using repeated ostinato patterns that continue relentlessly throughout the movement, as well as the fear created through the use of surprising rhythmic accents and registeral shifts. The last movement, Vignette IV: “Translator of Dreams,” contains many extended techniques which create strange and uncomfortable sounds on the cello, describing the significance and influence of dreams and the mind’s process of interpreting them.
Recommended Citation
Ahola, Grace, "Vignettes on a Premonition" (2023). 2023 Symposium. 1.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2023/cw_2023/mus_2023/1
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Vignettes on a Premonition
Art Building Gallery
with Gloria Miller
Vignettes on a Premonition is a collection of short pieces for cello duo, inspired by an unpleasant experience involving a spider and relational conflict. This experience instigated a dream which held significant meaning to the composer, warning of a painful ending and revealing the inward source of conflict. The Prelude was written using 2 different 12-tone rows and the rhythms were chosen by chance through the rolling of dice. The themes from Vignette I: “Arachnid” derived from 2 matrices made from the tone rows in the Prelude. This vignette describes the experience with the spider, twisting and turning gently in the beginning, as the spider crawls along the wall, and ending with one cello playing double stops in a very high register and the other cello adding rhythmic interest, while using ponticello technique to create a scream-like sound. Vignette II: “Shadow” is a variation of one of the themes from Vignette I, but takes a slower pulse since it is an exhalation of the preceding emotional buildup. This vignette transitions directly into Vignette III: “Nightmare,” which explicitly describes the resulting dream using repeated ostinato patterns that continue relentlessly throughout the movement, as well as the fear created through the use of surprising rhythmic accents and registeral shifts. The last movement, Vignette IV: “Translator of Dreams,” contains many extended techniques which create strange and uncomfortable sounds on the cello, describing the significance and influence of dreams and the mind’s process of interpreting them.
