Tracing the Outlines and Seams

Written for String Trio (2020)

Composed for the Amorsima Trio as part of their Beethoven Miniatures Commission Program

Mia Detwiler, Violin; Mike Capone, Viola; Kourtney Newton, Cello

Few musical ideas have had as outsized an impact on the trajectory of musical history as the opening motif of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Those four notes have echoed for centuries serving both to inspire and discourage further creation. In this work, I began from the premise of deconstructing that opening motif.: this entire miniature is an expansion of the first four bars of that symphony, with particular attention paid to the spaces and silences between the notes.