Chasm

Program Notes

When I began work on this piece, I did not have a pre-conceived formal or dramatic idea in mind which might guide its architecture. Instead, I began improvising quietly on a set of chorale chords. Playing these chords again and again, they began to build it into larger phrases, growing in intensity and volume. Eventually, the chorale unfolded into a wide registration spanning multiple octaves and it suggested to me an image of a wide expansive canyon; it is from this image that the tone poem Chasm (2012-2013) was born. Placing this chorale as the central point in the work, I began to work to work outwards towards the beginning and the ending. The first half of the piece attempts to convey a more timeless atmosphere, as quiet brass chords and lyrical woodwind melodies, intertwine and grow towards the “chasm chorale” in the middle. After this first climax, the second half of the piece is commences, now in stricter tempo with turbulent and shifting mixed-meter that builds towards a second climactic moment near the work’s end. Following the second climax, the music subsides, becoming timeless once again and fading away with gentle waves of string and brass chords, while melodic fragments in the harp and woodwinds recede quietly in the distance.

— Daniel Temkin

Postscript:
Chasm was a very important piece in my composing development, but it is ultimately a failure. Listening back to the work (as a whole, not merely the clips provided here), I can hear exactly what I attempted to do and where it fell short. Exploring ideas, forms, textures - this is at the very heart of what we do as composers, and it is normal that some of these explorations won’t turn into final pieces which endure. Chasm was that type of experiment, as I began wrestling with questions about larger form, and motivic development, questions that led to pieces like Ocean’s Call and Maksimal. Perhaps what was most important about this ‘experiment’, and the reason I have chosen to include it here on my website, is that it received tremendously committed and nuanced performances from Vinay Parameswaran and the Curtis Orchestra and Stephen Mulligan and the Aspen AACA Orchestra. Vinay, Stephen, and my instrumental colleagues, explored every phrase and gesture with sensitivity, beauty, and color, even as I tried a few too many things under the umbrella of a single piece. Revisiting these performances, even in a piece that I feel does not quite hold together, makes me so humble and grateful to my colleagues who have believed in my music and supported my work. They have given me a chance to explore and fail, so that I may learn and grow further.