honeycomb

for piccolo + piano

Commissioned by Brittany Primavera

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Duration: ca. 5'00"

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Premiere: January 22, 2019 | Tampa, FL | Francesca Arnone (piccolo) + Eunmi Ko (piano)

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Program Notes

honeycomb is a work for piccolo and piano that uses a cyclical pitch-set system to create a musical environment for the two instruments to interact within. Like an actual honeycomb, this cycle is based off of a hexagonal shape: the six sections of the piece consist of six tetrachords that are transposed in alternating intervals. These tetrachords are occur in three sets of two, moving from an open to closed interval structure.

The piano part rigidly follows this pitch structure for the first half of the piece, and also follows a time-point system based off of the overall transposition of the piece (using the numbers 3, 6, and 9). Within this structure the piccolo freely moves, playing outside of these rhythmic and harmonic constructs. Over the course of the piece, this system dissolves and comes back together, resulting in a more disjunct and rubato middle section. The nature of the system allows for a return to the first tetrachord in the piece at the very end.

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