3NF, or "Third Normal Form," is about information flow and structure. Since our conventional musical forms, such as the rondeaux, are likely to fall short in organizing even the loosest of business ventures, 3NF takes relational database design as a musical architecture. Admittedly, while the listener is less likely to be interested in "hearing" data models, the entity relationships help reinforce what we often enjoy in music: movement, or the flow of data, and melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic transformation.

Various database processes are mirrored in the music such as data insertion, the grouping of information tables, and the recombination of data. Commands are issued by abstractions of Morse code, and a running game of words—literally representing information—is coded and manipulated throughout the music. Striving to communicate both a cerebral and responsive experience, it is ultimately the tempering of concept and sound that best serves the listener here.

–A. S.

City Songs was written in the months following a move to a new urban scape and parallels the experience of new discovery. The rush of traffic, the inevitable work week, and the solitude of less-frequented bus stops all work to shape the piece into a celebration of the popular and the intimate. From the bustle and haste of the working day to midweek's repose in the second movement, the piece ends with the resonance of night life and sleek cars.

The guitar quartet is a medium in which homogeneity strikes balance with the changing role of each performer in the music. The properties of color and the motion of line are as independent as their owners, yet they combine to evoke a wonderful familiarity of sound. City Songs was commissioned by the Tantalus Quartet, to whom it is dedicated.

–A. S.

Currents aims to capture the energy of motion, even through the contrast of near stillness

The opening music, which is passive and sometimes subtle in its activity, takes advantage of what the flute knows best: air. Various incarnations of breath, percussive elements, and pitch gradations nudge the music forward.

The texture of the second movement, while tightly constrained, is an amorphous flow of growth and subrtaction. The music reflects a union of the two flutes, with one instrument always perpetuating the other. If possible, the sounds would be welded together, only to loosely slip apart again.

Currents is written for Christina Guenther and Dawn Weithe.

–A. S.

Robert Schumann's "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai," from his Dichterliebe had a profound musical effect on me. Writing the present work provided a close involvement with the elements of Schumann's song, while still offering my own interpretation of its musical language.

Taking advantage of open strings and other resonances, the guitar lends itself well to recreating the fluid texture and singing lines of the original nineteenth-century work. Two- and three-note motives, derived from Schumann's material, are woven throughout the piece in a variety of abtractions. In keeping with the implication of Schumann's open form, the music leaves the listener not fully resolved, but in longing for certainty.

–A. S.

The title, Lines and Regressions suggests linear qualities that are used to propel the music forward, as well as pull it back to slower, broader motions. Each movement sets the lines in a different textural environment.

The first movement makes use of long pedal points that are contrasted and combined with the repetition of chromatic motives and angular lines. The second movement creates a transparent atmosphere in which the lines project from the texture minimally. In the "Largo," the motion becomes even less active and occurs in a much wider space, as if to imply thin lines drawn on large sheets of paper.

While the last movement shares the angular and chromatic qualities of the "Allegro agitato," the texture is much denser and more heavily punctuated, evoking a brand of Stravinskiana that concludes the work.

–A. S.

Surfaces explores a variety of sonorities and textures in an often tumultuous representation. The expressive fluidity of the opening music is punctured, softly at first, creating a motion that gradually intensifies and then subsides. The second movement is tripartite, following a scheme suggested by the subtitle. The two movements are unified harmonically by a tetrachord, built of two adjacent tritones, and by the use of pitch repetition.

–A. S.

Written after the poetry of William Blake (1757-1827), this short song cycle takes advantage of the rich timbres offered by the ensemble, moving from the darker sounds of the opening song to an energetic brightness of the closing movement.

Interestingly, Blake's "The Sick Rose" can be divided syllabically in such a way that the word "joy"—a highlight of the text—corresponds with the golden ratio of the poem. The structure of the music is precisely controlled to coincide with this event, aligning the number of measures and beats, as well as emphasizing dynamic and range, with this occurrence.

–A. S.

Written after the poem [into the strenuous briefness] by e. e. cummings (1894-1962);

Text is used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Written after the poetry of Theodor Storm (1817-1888)

Derivation was written with the idea that science can influence music on many levels. Just as phenotype and genotype can be expressed in genetics, the same terms may describe a musical work, distinguishing its phenotype—or perceived impression—from its inner design and structure, the genotype. Experimentation with mapping pitches onto basic biological constructs results in interesting musical parallels. By considering phonetics of pitches to contrive motivic material, the DNA model may be replicated (pun intended) as the octatonic set (02). This reflects the concept of organicism quite literally. The opening motive serves as the genesis of the work, undergoing transformations (mutations) that unify the different sections.