nearly all my poems are letters to you (2020)

For harp

Duration circa 14 minutes

Despite the title of this piece, there is no programmatic intention in what unfolds as sound: any or no relationship to the title and the sounding music is forged at the discretion of the composer and listener. Despite this statement, there is an unfolding of material that manifests through contrasting sections of music to hopefully provide the listener with a compelling listening experience even without programmatic intent. It is the interplay between and within these sections that is the narrative content of the composition.

The material itself is self-borrowed from a number of bars found in a solo piano work called Conrad’s Toye, composed immediately before nearly all my poems are letters to you, that itself uses self-borrowed and transformed materials from pneuma, a piece for solo contrabass recorder that too, immediately proceeded its composition. The material that runs through all three compositions comprises of rhythmic units built from four quavers in a 4/8 bar simultaneously overlaying seven quavers in the same 4/8 bar illustrating the ratio between the two of 7:4. It is this polymetric relationship that connects all these pieces, making them part of the same material family.

© Marc Yeats, May 2020