Visions and Miracles (1997/2002)

for string quartet or string orchestra
Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for the Cassatt, Muir, and Cuartetto Latinoamericano String Quartets

I. All joy wills eternity
II. Peace Love Light YOUMEONE
III. I add brilliance to the sun

Duration: 17 minutes

Listen

• Mvt 1 excerpt, “All joy wills eternity” (1'39)
• Mvt 2 excerpt, “Peace Love Light YOUMEONE” (0'55)
• Mvt 3 excerpt, “I add brilliance to the sun” (0'49)

String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC)

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While I was writing Visions and Miracles, I had been listening to the medieval Spanish work, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, performed by the wonderful early music group, Ensemble Alcatraz. That music struck me as fantastically joyous and graceful, and the asymmetric melodic and rhythmic characters of these pieces became a major inspiration for me in composing this work.  

All joy wills eternity takes its title from a line of Friedrich Nietzsche, and features the quartet in the very fast tempo of quarter note equals 232 alternating groupings of 2s and 3s. Melodies ride over this erratic and unpredictable pulse. 

The second movement’s title, Peace Love Light YOUMEONE, comes from a poetic fragment of the 60’s counterculture figure, Timothy Leary. The movement proceeds as a kaleidoscopic presentation of ascending scales over a drone note which is finally released at the end. Strands of melodies momentarily form and submerge from these scales.  

I add brilliance to the sun is a line from a medieval troubadour song, and like the first, this movement has an unusually fast tempo. The melodic lines here come from a descending line of differing lengths in rapid succession.

Visions and Miracles was commissioned in 1997 by the Barlow Endowment for the Cassatt, Muir, and Cuartetto Latinoamericano string quartets, and lasts approximately 17 minutes.

—Christopher Theofanidis