'in drops of dew will I sink down and mingle with the dust' is a line taken from the Hymns of the Night by the German Romantic poet, Novalis, which speaks of night as the threshold between life and death. Novalis died far too soon, at the age of 28, and his work has been an important and guiding light in my own 28th year. The past years have seen the passing of too many friends, and Novalis's writing has provided both comforting solace and a greater confidence in accepting mortality and fragility in my own person. In reading Novalis, I was immediately struck by this line and wanted to translate this motion of the absorption between water and dust into the sonic medium, a return into the earth. A harmonic texture is set-up which becomes decentered in its own development, forcing it to journey through uncomfortable and odd territories before it reaches a level of satiation, signaling the arrival of a new, manifold substance. 'in drops of dew will I sink down and mingle with the dust' was written for Ensemble Dal Niente.
Performer Credits
Ensemble Dal Niente / Emma Hospelhorn, bass flute; Zachary Good, bass clarinet; Matthew Oliphant, horn; Ben Melsky, harp; Kyle Flens, percussion; Theo Ramsey, violin; Juan Horie, cello ;Michael Lewanski, conductor
