Range of Light

I began composition on Range of Light in the spring of 2000. In August, with approximately half of the piece completed, circumstances made it necessary to set it aside. As a result, the trio lay untouched for nearly a year and a half.

In 2002, when I was able to address the work again, I was reminded of a phrase quoted by another composer when asked to explain a particular passage in his work: “At one time God and I knew what that meant… now God only knows.” Such is the difficulty of returning to a work after a significant hiatus; it is nearly always a struggle, and sometimes impossible to recover the conceptual basis for the work or, certainly, its inspiration. I suppose this situation is preferable to Ralph Vaughn Williams’, who when asked about his London Symphony said, “I don’t know whether I like it, but it is what I meant.”

Actually, rediscovering this work turned out to be a wonderful and surprising experience. The first movement, a quasi-recitative for cello, fell easily into place as the piano and percussion added color and metric punch. Ideas cut from the original first movement took on new life as the scherzo-like second movement, evolving into something quite startling, even a little risky and capricious. Additionally, the central idea of the first movement became prominent as a thematic link to the second. Heard first at the very opening of the piece, it can be characterized as a fortississimo splash of “light” in the piano and crotales (antique cymbals) that launches rapidly accelerating repetitions of an open fifth in the cello.

Range of Light was premiered by Raffael Popper-Keizer, Hugh Hinton, and Robert Schulz at the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival in Vermont, July, 2002.

E.M.