Sonata pian e forte [2022-23], for ten brass
Sonata pian e forte derives its title and source material from the Venetian polychoral traditions of Giovanni Gabrieli, some of the earliest notated music composed specifically for brass consort. This piece employs the same massed brass instruments to highlight and extend Gabrieli’s concepts of dimensionality and spatialized sound, forming material and conceptual relationships between these archaic and contemporary sonic idioms. Through precisely tuned divisions of microtonal harmonic space, spatial orchestration, and an emphasis on rich timbral fusion, Sonata pian e forte forges the diverse voices of the expanded Apparat ensemble into a single sculptural brass instrument. Drawing on my own practice as a trombonist, I wanted to center the immediacy of the brass ensemble’s sound: the instruments’ ability to powerfully shape our virtual and aural spaces into charged sites of ecstatic metallic resonance.
