This Ease

This Ease is a piece that sits on the edge of something familiar: we have heard certain colors before – the harp, the bells, the slow choral-like harmonic ground in the strings – and yet it is a piece that seeks to disrupt and question these familiar elements very subtly. Its slow and gentle beginning grows gradually and nearly imperceptibly. The material leaves questions to be answered later, and carves its path through the musical textures. Motivic and harmonic cells develop and transform into a melodic section, which erupts into a highpoint of rhythmic agitation with huge vertical blocks of sound. When the gentler material returns, it takes on a different significance: in retrospect our ears realize the soft music’s potential for violence. Hannah Lash