Category: Composition
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The Tyranny of the Bar Line
The Choir Bouncing on Bars At a rehearsal with the Philharmonie der Universität Wien, I experienced the strangest kind of failure. The choir was not wrong. Every entrance was technically in place, the rhythms aligned, the notated values observed. Yet the music refused to breathe. Instead of unfolding as a phrase, it bounced. Each voice…
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The Impossible Line: Writing for Solo Violin
Writing for solo violin means writing what cannot be played—at least not fully, not all at once. Yet composers return to it again and again, not because the instrument is sufficient in itself, but because it so obviously isn’t. The solo violin is radically exposed: a single body, a single bow, a single vibrating plane…