orchestra
12 minutes
1999

As the title implies, this piece explores various ways that the instrumental and harmonic resources of the orchestra can be mixed in order to produce coloristic variety. The reference is to Kandinsky’s Farbstudie—Quadrate mit konzentrischen Ringen. The relationship to Kandinsky’s work is distant, but can be distilled to a simple exploration of structure and color. That it contains a certain expressionistic narrative streak—of the sort deliberately eliminated from most of my later work—is, in retrospect, inevitable.