Threadsuns

The third and final version of a piece first written for Exceptet in 2015 and subsequently twice revised, Threadsuns takes its title from a famous book by my favorite poet, Paul Celan. In this latest in an ongoing series of orchestral palimpsests, I expand on a much larger canvas musical textures suggested by previous, unsatisfactory smaller pieces, just as Celan often overwrote not only other writers’ work but his own earlier poems. There are two movements, their syntax similar yet equally distinct: Augenblicke (Eye-blink) and Mikrolithen (Microliths). The compression and fitful progression of the material echoes Celan’s clotted syntax, and at less than eight minutes Threadsuns partakes too of his famous brevity.