The Play of Shine & Shade

ensemble 4.4.4.3, 6.4.4.1, timp+perc., hp., strings
written winter-spring 2026
duration 11 minutes

Commissioned by the Second Ending Ensemble as the inaugural winner of their commissioning competition

program notes

The works of art that stay with me often engage with contradiction: sculptures that give the illusion of motion, stories of the everyday told with the intensity of an epic, films that go over the same events from multiple, conflicting perspectives. I remember being fascinated and alienated when I first encountered Mahler’s boldly incongruous music. His muses ranged from Dante’s Inferno to children’s songs, and from this swirl of references emerged an unpredictable soundworld as likely to unleash a massive tutti as it was to maddeningly noodle about a simple ländler.

The Play of Shine & Shade, as its title might suggest, is a study in Mahlerian contrasts: the very high versus the very low, tightly gridded rhythms versus the metrically ambiguous, small-scale gestures versus vast, shimmering soundscapes. Over the course of the piece, these elements are freely brought together and apart. Shade, in the end, can only exist in the presence of shine, despite the two being thought of as opposites.

Many thanks to Ian Schaefer and the Second Ending Ensemble for commissioning and premiering the piece.