“In Pulses, in Strokes…” (2011) for flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano. Performance on Thursday, March 2nd 2017, Kobacker Hall, at Bowling Green University, Bowling Green, Ohio, U.S.A.
BGSU New Music Ensemble. Maria Mercedes Diaz Garcia — conductor.
Program Notes
The title of the work is derived from a reply (dated “Grand Hotel, Rome, 4, I, 1941”) by George Santayana to a letter by Ezra Pound (reproduced in Machine Art and Other Writings):
Existence comes in pulses, in strokes. I see no reason for not stopping, or for stropping, anywhere in that flux. Existence has as many centres as it happens to have, as many moments, feelings, assumptions, questions—all in the air and with no power over one another. But if we have time and patience to study a natural world posited as the source and common continuum in all this existence, we assume that it has dynamic unity: otherwise from one point in it we could never justly infer or posit any other point in it. This is my argument for materialism. — GS
from The Letters of George Santayana: 1941-1947