Cover Art by Taylor D. Dewey

This piece actually came out of an unexpected sound file from my undergrad.  I was still using Finale 2000 at the time, which hardly had any playback capabilities worth noting, and I was given an assignment for an orchestration class I was in, taught by Dr. David Crumb, to write an etude for cello.  The specifications for the assignment was to utilize three different types of techniques common to the cello (ie. pizzicato, harmonics, etc.).  After completing the assignment, I decided to let Finale play back for me what it thought I had written, just for the fun of it, and what I heard were a series of fourths, pizzicato being played arco, among many other awful sounds.  Basically, what was coming out of my computer speaker was as far from reality as I had ever imagined.

For some unknown reason, this series of fourths stayed in my mind, along with the melody that was supposed to be pizzicato, and when I decided I was going to write a piece for string orchestra, that was all I could hear.  Had I left it in the original etude form, the piece would have been a disaster, but as it turned out, using the etude’s artificial melody and making a pledge to avoid staying in any one harmonic area for too long, what came out was a rather extraordinary work that I really never expected.