The Mind is its Own Beautiful Prisoner

This piece was inspired by an e.e. cummings poem of the same name. The poem is told through the voice of a man who has lost his lover and covers various themes such as loss, betrayal, paradoxical dichotomy and mental self-imprisonment. I wanted to explore some of these ideas in my own music and set out to do so using the wind quintet. The piece consists of a harmonic progression that is presented roughly five times throughout the piece with the ultimate goal being to present it as a clear homogeneous unit, however, it is only heard clearly in the final section of the work. The wind players present the progression through angular, jagged melodic figures throughout the rest of the piece, sometimes working together and other times working against one another. The electronics act as a constant antagonist, always adding layers to disrupt the wind players or add a distant layer of complexity that serves to disrupt their motion toward group singularity. The quintet represents the idea of self-imprisonment – a single unit that is constantly seeking solidarity and individuality of the component parts – while the electronics represent the idea of the lost lover – a distant and completely autonomous entity within the framework which remains completely unaffected by the acoustic element. It is simultaneously a self-contained voice and an interacting medium that only serves to disrupt any attempts the quintet makes toward their ultimate goal.