Woefully arrayed [2023-4]

for alto saxophone and guitar

duration :: 17’

Commissioned by Salim(a) Javaid and Mauricio Galeano

First performance :: TBA

This duo has drifted rather far from the marvelous polyphonic song by William Cornysh that was its initial impetus. At one stage a substrate of rather more literal transcription was meant to have an intermittent spectral presence, but in the end the song's perceptible concrete influence is probably limited to the emphasis on alternating semitone motion that percolates throughout in various surface guises, the persistent if inconsistent clouds of regular pulse, and maybe to a handful of other (usually slightly distorted) local turns of melodic phrase. I considered changing the title.

What has grown to fill the open spaces between these signposts is a series of frail fluttering ribbons, a general trajectory from the insistently violent to the whisperingly private, and a rotating collection of abortive attempts to reconcile this irreconcilable pair of instruments.