Incapacity

Gabriel Fynsk

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Orchestra

2023

8 min.

Piano

Program Notes: In 2006 my grandmother passed away. Her funeral was held on a short Virginia day in a long, dreadful room. By her casket was a closed grand piano that I couldn’t help but eye throughout the ceremony – my grandfather, my ‘Opa’ had recently taught me how to play Für Elise. As visitors exited to the standing room, I snuck back into that moonlit hall to open up the piano. I couldn’t quite make out any of the notes; moreover, I could barely make out the difference between the white and the black keys. So I stared forward and let my hands play in the dark. When I was done, I found the post-it notes that were used during the ceremony to send passing wishes to Gigi and left a rough scribble on the piano that read, “I want to be a pianist.” Incapacity is a repetition of this gesture. It is a 'play-in-the-dark'. Through a single, blind improvisation in my mothertongue for music, I test and try the vertiginous relation between poeisis and mimesis in the event of creation: that I know one "music" and it is never mine.
Ensemble Name: University of Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra