the Other side of the window

a seven-movement song cycle for medium voice, two antiphonal flutes, guitar, cello, and toy piano (1995), 25’

The seven poems by contemporary Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, which serve as the departure point for this song cycle, frequently allude to sensory perception – a subject seeming to beg for larger meanings which are impossible in music because of its abstract nature. The perceptual ramification of gender differences is a recurring theme in Atwood's poetry and prose works. (Her most famous novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is an apocalyptic allegory of a world where women have been rendered completely powerless and submissive.) While the question of a "feminist aesthetic" in music has been one of the hot debates in musicological circles in recent years, a male composer could only hope to bridge the gap (or open the window) in any attempt to address these gender differences musically. Hence the overall title of the series—The Other Side Of The Window—which is a line that occurs in the first poem. The words and rhythms of the poems determine the structure and content of all the vocal lines as well as the instrumental accompaniments. In this way, the meaning of the music is conveyed through the poem, and vice versa. The poems offer many musical clues: "(Movie)"'s "waltz in slow motion" determines rhythm and tempo while "(The Magic Fork)"'s "a voice sings Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing" has only one possible solution. The repetition of the word "fall" throughout "Keep" suggested the descending flute lines. "No Name"'s "warm and offering everything" is accompanied by a sweeping tonal resolution which comes after the accumulation of many layers of polytonal complexity. The perpetuum mobile accompanying "More and More" disintegrates at "edges of me dissolve."

The Other Side of the Window received its world premiere in 1996 at La Mama La Galleria in New York City in a performance by Cybele Pashke (voice), Darius Kaufmann and Michelle Ryang (flutes), Sid Whelan (guitar), Rebecca Pechefsky (toy piano), and Ellen Rose (cello). It has subsequently been performed in Bennington, Vermont and Seattle, Washington.