Dichotomy

Commissioned by the Arapahoe Philharmonic

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, piano, timpani, 3 percussion, strings

Year composed: 2017

Duration: 20'

I view Dichotomy as my first trial as far as composing for orchestra. My earlier orchestral works, Episode for Orchestra, and another never to be published, were composed while attending school and with the purpose in mind to get the juvenile orchestration mistakes out of the way. Though I can't say I was fully advanced at Dichotomy's inception—I had just only finished my graduate studies—it's a work I feel necessary to be documented.

Like all my works at the time, Dichotomy is non-programmatic—there is no influence coming from the outside of the piece. My initial idea, if I were to have an orchestral work worthy of a performance, was to have an extended one movement or at least a three movement work. But with the given time limit of 18 to 20 minutes, I felt odd writing music with those structures. Two movements was an idea though it seemed incomplete to me. (There haven't been many orchestral works to prove two movements could sound conclusive. At the time, I could think of only Lutosławski's Symphony No. 2.) Nonetheless, I tried to embrace the discomfort of having a two movement work. It's an opportunity to build contrast, one of my favorite writing strategies, between the movements to structure a work's identity. Though we hear the first movement's material in the second, there's clear contrasts between the two: the first movement is slow compared to the faster second movement, the first movement is mostly strings where the second is more orchestrally balanced. With this, I began to favor having a two movement work and wanted to show a new respect for it with an appropriate name. Reviewing synonyms for "two," "dichotomy" immediately became a favorite. 

Dichotomy was my first concert commission. For this, I'd like to extend a special thank you to Devin Patrick Hughes and the Arapahoe Philharmonic.