I consider the nocturne, in its depiction of what humans experience in the night, to be an atmospheric and slightly surrealistic type of music, rather than a well-defined formal structure. The sights and sounds of the night in nature have a different quality of perception than during the day because of something way down deep in our evolutionarily developed brains, which certainly influenced Van Gogh, though he was probably unaware of it. This new work takes its title from Van Gogh’s famous painting, in which I believe he captured the atmosphere of the night sky so perfectly in the way he geometrically reinforces and decorates the shapes of natural starlight and moonlight in a landscape. His painting exhibits the archetypal qualities of what we call post-impressionism, and got me thinking about the possibility that I might be able to compose music that has similar qualities in the way that I decorate and acoustically reinforce my musical materials that I invented for the piece. I don’t consider my composition after the painting to be a commentary on the picture as such, but more of a musical analog of it.
La Nuit Étoilée is not a traditional double concerto work, but more of a quasi-Baroque concertato, whereby the harp and piano soloists play an elaborately decorated version of the music that the string orchestra plays the simpler bare bones of, but simultaneously rather in a strophic form. It gives me the opportunity to be lyrical and dramatic at the same time, which is why I like the form so much. I am always very concerned in my music with the flow of time and creating a musical structure that has an overall shape that tells a story or depicts a journey from one place to another, and this work is no exception.
Commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Orchestra, director Lorenzo Marasso.
