locus desperatus [2026]

for fortepiano

duration :: 5’

Commissioned by Jack Yarbrough with the support of the Cornell University Center for Historical Keyboards

First performance :: TBD

A “locus desperatus” (Latin: “hopeless place”) is not what it sounds like. The term is philological; it refers to a passage in an old text that is irretrievably lost because all extant sources are corrupted beyond intelligibility and context is not determinative.

The idea of repeated, failed, attempts at interpretation is at the center of this weightless little piece: it circles without alighting, revisits without settling. Everything is subject to rereading, on all levels, with a sort of gently hovering self-similarity, and questions are not answered.

There are a handful of relatively extended meditations on a single pitch. The first, on b', which engenders the others, is also a little memorial for Peter Ablinger, whose favorite pitch it was. He was also fond of asking questions without expecting answers.