Spindrift (2015)

harp, piano
12 min.

Spindrift is a trail of fine, windblown particles streaming off the crest of a larger form – like snow from a mountain ridge, water droplets from a wave, or sand from a dune. I sought to create a sounding parallel to this visual image in the way small, highly ornamented figurations are buffeted about, creating a volatile, slowly evolving tapestry of flashes, echoes and trills suspended in the higher registers. The title also refers more obliquely to the two kinds of motion the piece is built on, either whirling around fixed points in space, or floating freely. The overall texture is very spare and brittle, more wind than land. But as the music progresses, the larger mass underlying the more rapid figurations slowly becomes audible, almost a tone at a time, forming a sort of dark, elemental chorale looming into the foreground about midway through, bringing a resonant stillness that is never fully dispelled afterward. The piece simply drifts off in a series of ever briefer, ever more distant flurries of notes.