To procure the music for “In a Holt of Giant Hatpins”, please contact Trevor Zavac.
Program Notes
Each word in the title of this work, In the Banks of Posy’s Delection, throws the clause deeper into a pleasing chaos. “In” seems to contextualize “banks” to mean “an establishment specializing in the management and safekeeping of money” as opposed to “the land bordering a waterway”. Similarly, the lack of an article before “Posy” leaves us to wonder if “Posy” is a person, a flower, or a legendary idea. And “delection”—to the extent that it is even a word—could refer to either something delectable or some that is unelected. Is this “delection” an entity of Miss Posy’s past which has been buried next to a river? Is it where a particularly important flower has invested its political dissatisfaction? I like to think all of its denotations exist at once, perpetually clarifying and mystifying each other.
Musically, this idea is explored through the use of a synthetic scale and its alternation/superimposition with its compliment. The musical ideas are arranged and rearranged next to one another in every conceivable manner, mimicking this exercise in finding (or assuming) meaning through contextualization. The music, like the sentence, can mean not only anything, but everything and nothing simultaneously.
Instrumentation
- Clarinet
- Violin
- Viola
- Piano