circles mostly in wood

a wind quintet in 1/4 tones (2002), 20’

The process of unexpected transformation, which had affected so many aspects of my personal life for about a year, was the guiding principle for the composition of circles mostly in wood, scored for wind quintet, a very unexpected heterogenous combination of instruments which are not even all from the same orchestral family. In fact, the title of the composition is a play on the fact that all of this music is inspired by something in my neighborhood, Inwood; each movement completes a circular journey of some type scored for an ensemble consisting of mostly, but not exclusively, wooden instruments. Also, the five movements worked themselves out over the course of a year which completes a circle, and each are based in some way or another on a hexachord in the quartertone system that when inverted, retrograded and retrograde-inverted generates the full cycle of 24 quartertones, completing yet another circle.