Caltabiano: Quilt Panels

Quilt Panels

Duration:

17 min.

Year:

1990

Cl. Hn. Pno. Vln. Vla. Vcl.

Catalog No.:

144-40401

	Opening (1' 01" -- 977 K)		download

	Ostinato (1' -- 944 K)		download

An initial inspiration for Quilt Panels came in the early morning hours of a cool October day in 1987, at the first full showing of the AIDS Quilt in Washington, D.C. The enormous range of emotions I felt included shock, grief, joyful memories, anger, and an overwhelming sense of loss. The six "panels" of this 19-minute sextet (played without break) are an attempt to make explicit these emotions, which words can only imply. Perhaps because of these personal associations, my usual compositional procedures were often put aside in favor of a more instinctive stream of musical consciousness. Most musical aspects of Quilt Panels can be traced to the sequence of major, minor, and diminished thirds presented at the outset by the cello.

Quilt Panels was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1992; it is dedicated to all those fighting the war against AIDS.

-- R.C.

Quilt Panels for clarinet, horn, string trio and piano was inspired by the AIDS Quilt.... The sextet is in six continuous sec-tions, each of which is dominated by a single instrument. From a simple set of notes - it begins with some angry gestures by the horn - it builds to something grand and sad.... But what was most impressive was the young composer's control of his materials, his ability to suggest nostalgia without becoming sentimental and his ability to write idiomatically for his superb instrumentalists.
-- The [Baltimore] Sun

Quilt Panels is an obliquely emotional abstraction of mounting anguish and assaulted dignity. Symphonic scale is approached at the climax of the work, which plumbs depths of feeling without cheap theatrics or pulsing pathos.
-- The [New Orleans] Times-Picayune