Salve Regina

​My interest in counterpoint underlies much of my concert music. My string quintet, presented in this video along with the score, is a large-scale polyphonic conception and an unusual, multi-faceted outcome of my fascination with the music of the Franco-Flemish School. The ‘Salve Regina’ plainchant unfolds in the Viola I and II parts over the course of the work as a cantus firmus. It is the inspiration for the work’s obsessive, relentless, virtuosic polyphony. The work abounds in esoteric contrapuntal play. Its rhythmic language satisfies an urge to create new, complex, dynamic polyphonic interactions. Its pitch language notably moves fluently and at times symbolically between atonality and pure diatonicism, a primary compositional interest of mine. The work was composed for my Reinterpretations concert series as part of the performance-lecture “Polyphony, Mysticism, and the Music of Opposites,” presented at Spectrum on May 15, 2016.