for flute and piano
duration: 16 minutes
MOVEMENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
PROGRAM NOTE
The title for the piece comes from the last stanza of one of Theodore Roethke’s best-know poems, “The Far Field,” a meditation on death and the ends of things. The line reads: “All finite things reveal infinitude.”
Much of this piece is made up of dream-like progressions of sparse, irregular melodic fragments, suspended in both time and the decaying resonance of the piano. These little fragments reminded me of the dead and decaying things that fill the fields of Roethke’s poem, as well as the abandoned fields on an old farm near my childhood home that I used to explore. You could think of them like pieces of rusted machinery, or a decaying fence: overgrown with weeds, fallen down or rusted out, but with the original form still visible beneath the overgrowth, or the rust, or despite being broken into pieces.
Yoshi and Daniel have brought this piece to life with great sensitivity and expressive nuance. I was honored to write something for the two of them after working together years ago at the nief-norf Summer Institute. I give Finite Things to them with deep admiration and gratitude.
Finite Things was commissioned by Yoshi Weinberg and Daniel Schreiner.
PERFORMANCES
October 6, 2022, at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY. Yoshi Weinberg & Daniel Schreiner