Rhapsody (2009)

Rhapsody is for three small orchestras (eight strings in each, trombone and harp in the first, flute and horn in the second, and bassoon and trumpet in the third). Petr Kotik had suggested I do another piece for three orchestras (after Ordinary Matter in 2001). This one is much reduced in instrumentation (from eighty to thirty players), but somehow that made it possible to think and work in more complex ways. The structural procedure is like other recent pieces, a number of patches of various kinds and lengths, just one after another, with the hope for invisible threads precariously holding it all together. The title doesn't refer to the standard musical designation of "rhapsody." It is (in a slightly varied form) an ancient Greek word meaning "song stitching," the work of performers of poetry from the time of Homer on. I also had in mind, though I've worked here on a much smaller scale, the wonderful artwork of Jennifer Bartlett, first shown at the Paula Cooper gallery in New York in 1976, called "Rhapsody."