- Von blau zu grün (From blue to green) (1990) 9'
- English horn, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
- Premiere—1990, by members of the Augsburg (Germany) Philharmonic.
Program Note
The title of Von blau zu grün, is borrowed from a painting by the German abstract painter, E.W. Nay, which hangs in the Kunsthalle in Augsburg, Germany. The painting, with its playful, floating masses of blue, black and green, served as the backdrop for a concert of my music in July, 1990, in which this work served as the closing number. My piece is not an analogue to the painting, however. Rather, I was interested in the way a placid harmony (to my sense, blue) proceeds from and flows to a more active one (green). Thus, each color is first granted its own movement, associated with a tetrachord. The "blue" chord sounds pentatonic, and contains mild dissonances, the more piquant "green" chord resembles a dominant-seventh. A final movement juxtaposes the chords in a continuously breathing harmonic succession. An additional aspect of design: the piano, silent in the first movement, joins in linear dialogue with the instruments in the middle movement, and swaps roles with them in the last. Here, the four form a new, unison instrument, to the piano's pulsed chordal accompaniment.