Lament for Paper and Pen
Recording Coming Soon
Publisher: Bachovich Music Publications
Instrumentation: Three suspended cymbals, one medium-size flat gong or tam-tam (minimum 16″)
Program Notes:
Handwriting has always fascinated me. There’s something visceral and quite personal about it. I’ve always felt like I know a person better when I see something they’ve handwritten. Perhaps this comes from my parents, both of whom have beautiful handwriting, or maybe because my penmanship (as my grandmother used to call it) is absolutely awful.
The use of handwriting has become somewhat of a lost art in our digital age. If you think about what we actually write by hand now, the list is growing quite short. Even our signature is starting to get replaced with “digital signatures” on documents. While I rarely write anything to another person by hand (because of my previously mentioned penmanship deficiency), receiving a handwritten item from another person is something I always appreciate.
When Keith Aleo contacted me about writing a solo piece for only cymbals, a few thoughts came to mind. The first was how individual each cymbal is. Even cymbals that are manufactured to be identical tend to be different, sometimes quite significantly. The second was how rarely we listen to just a cymbal. To let a cymbal sound alone and just enjoy that sound for what it is seldom occurs in music today.
These connections of individuality and rarity between handwriting and cymbals were the genesis for Lament for Paper and Pen. Many thanks to Keith Aleo for his dedication and passion to this project, as well as his patience throughout the slow creation and development of my piece.