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Ensemble
2025
Cello
Clarinet
Double Bass
Flute
Unpitched Percussion
Viola
- Program Notes
- The piece krona was composed as part of a collaborative project between the Studio for Contemporary Music at the Academy of Music and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Ljubljana. The main premise of the project was that a student composer would compose an ensemble piece on the theme of a given astrophysics subject in collaboration with a member of the astrophysics department at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. I was paired with Bor Jamnik, a doctoral student specializing in binary star constellations, which became the inspiration behind my piece. We met at Klub Kazina, a café situated at the Academy of Music, on December 9th, 2024, at 3 PM, where he gave me a quick run-through of the topic of binary stars. During our meeting, he directed my attention to the recurrent nova binary star T Coronae Borealis, from which the known and available data became the basis for krona. T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), nicknamed the Blaze Star, is a binary star and a recurrent nova about 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Corona Borealis. It was first observed in outburst in 1866 by John Birmingham, though it had been recorded earlier as a 10th-magnitude star. It may also have been observed in 1217 and 1787. In February 1946, Michael Woodman, a 15-year-old schoolboy from Wales, observed a flare-up and wrote to the Astronomer Royal, leading to the theory that the star flares approximately every 80 years. T CrB is a binary star system consisting of a white dwarf and a red giant. When a nova occurs, energy from the white dwarf transfers to the red giant at an accelerating rate, leading to a flare. In the piece, I portrayed each star as a multiphonic and assigned them to instrumental groups. The white dwarf is represented by the clarinet multiphonic in Instrumental Group 1, while the red giant is represented by the tenor saxophone multiphonic in Instrumental Group 2. Composing the parts for each group was an attempt to orchestrate the underlying multiphonic associated with that group. The percussion part represents a neutral element amidst the gravitational interplay between the two groups. The timeline of the piece is based on a graph depicting the last observed nova in 1946. It is predicted that we should expect a new nova eruption in the year(s) 2025–26.
- Recording Notes
31st of May 2025, Academy of Music University of Ljubljana, Julij Betetto Hall Ensemble of the Studio for Contemporary Music
Steven Loy, conductor
Ajda Mori, flute
Lucija Dujmović, clarinet
Marko Petek, tenor saxophone
Andrija Å afran, trombone
Gašper Šemrov, percussion
Brina Podgajski Kampuš, viola
Sara ÄŒano, cello
Sara Marinović, double bass
Composed in collaboration with the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
- Performer Credits
- Ensemble of the Studio for Contemporary Music Academy of Music University of Ljubljana, conducted by Steven Loy