in paradisum (numbryng) [2026]

for bass recorder and basson de chalumeau

duration :: 12’

Commissioned by Carl Rosman with the support of an artist grant from the ‘Corona-Hilfe’ funding package of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhein-Westphalia.

First performance :: Carl Rosman and Erik Bosgraaf— 7 August 2026 — Kalvfestivalen, Kalv, Sweden

Distant relations: to the “in paradisum” chant and text from the end of the Requiem service, confessing a desire for ascent; to—in the atomized textual fragments in the part for basson de chalumeau—the metaphysical mathematics of John Dee (in his so-called “Mathematicall Preface” to an edition of Euclid), also a preoccupation of my recent extended work O Maria for voices and string quartet, to which this piece forms a sort of (also distantly related) appendix; of the instruments to each other in their wary orbiting, and of the performers to their instruments, and to us. in paradisum (numbrying) is a gently failed duet in which everything is both infinitely distant and infinitely close, with all the instabilities, tentativenesses, ambiguities, and uncertainties that implies.