difficulty: advanced
Duration: 22 min.

In his program note for the work, Primosch shares that the work is meant to represent three visions, “light as a spiritual presence; the absence of light; the lights of an amusement park midway.” He notes that he views the “multiple colors of the wind ensemble,” with its ample percussion, as ideal for “meditations on light.” In an e-mail to the author, the composer shared that the instrumentation is essentially “winds in fours,” and that he assumed there would be solo players for each part, though he could imagine doublings working in a larger ensemble. He also described the language of the piece as “broad-based, drawing on a variety of tonal, polytonal, modal, and atonal elements,” which is characteristic of his work in general.

The first of the three movements in the work, which reflects on “light as a spiritual presence,” is called “Light from Light,” borrowing its title from the Catholic Nicene Creed (Primosch is a devout Catholic). This movement is in ABA form, with slow “A” sections based on the plainchant melody for Puer Natus Est (“A Child is Born”); the “B” section also borrows motives from the same chant, “but in the context of a sort of faux organum texture, using the compound meter and perfect intervals associated with organum, but not based on a particular organum piece.” The composer claims this movement “chants and dances, singing of a singular birth.”

“…And We Cannot Recognize the Forms of Light” is the second movement of the work. The title is borrowed from a poem by Susan Stewart, a poet whose work has been set in several of Primosch’s pieces. The tempo of the movement is marked molto adagio, mesto, and is “a set of variations on an original melody.” The program note describes how “a repeated melodic pattern permeates the obsessions” of this slow second movement.

Primosch describes the finale of the work as bouncing and whirling about; it derives characteristics of the blues in reference to “carnival rides glowing at dusk.” This movement, titled “A Coney Island of the Mind,” is drawn from a book of poetry of the same title by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Primosch describes the movement as playful, “with more than a hint of the blues,” and notes that ostinati factor heavily into the work, as well as plentiful changes in meter.

-From The History of the Big Ten Directors Association (Eric W. Bush)