Composition

Notes

Glass is a pair of programmatic concert etudes. The visible properties of glass lie on a continuum from transparent to reflective, with various degrees of distortion in between. Glass also has a property of breaking suddenly.

“Reflections” is a study in harmonics, whose shimmering sound evokes images of glass in a fragile state. In this movement a simple stepwise motion on one string comes through a twisted mirror as a sort of bugle call in harmonics on the adjacent string.

“Refractions” plays with the ambiguous glassy sounds of rushing scales in ponticello (a wispy sound created by playing with the bow unusually close to the bridge), very high harmonics, and sudden explosions.