PLUM – DSII (1976)
Program Notes
© 2005

Plum – DSII is the second of a dream sequence series. While the first, for trombone, suggests a dream of a fictional trombone player, with direct suggestions of practice arpeggios, excerpts from Tommy Dorsey tunes, sequencer passages, etc., this second dream sequence uses the imagery in a more metaphoric and poetic manner. Thus the materials are more integrated, and it is rather on the structural and programmatic level that the dream occurs.

The work is in eight major sections, with each section having a different character, for example, fast and furtive, episodic, quiescent, or drifting. While each of these sections is strictly written out, surrounding most of the sections is, what I have termed, derivative materials. These are materials of short length (like tape splices), that are in some manner derived from a main body of material, i.e. the numbered sections. They may be considered commentary, in almost the Talmudic sense. The player is allowed, or encouraged, to elide these secondary materials into the main narrative at his discretion. Thus, he is asked, to make quick, dreamlike connections between these materials at will. This process allows for the player (particularly in the multiple flute version) to take different pathways through the material at the same time, to comment, re-order, and elaborate on new connections. The player is asked to take a particular narrative, and move through it in different emotive states. It thus provides the possibility for a simultaneous presentation of these different emotive states, or for a confluence of narratives to move at the same time.

The work was written for my friend and colleague, Robert Dick.