My own roots in popular music were yearning for nutrition and attention and they got it. It was natural for me, therefore, to express my grief in this antique, exquisitely bourgeois musical form. Cardew would have appreciated. There simply is no contradiction, the composer and the listener readily accept these two unlikely musical objects, brought into being and joined forever by no will of their own. In short, they simply are, because it is.
Music is mindless tho' it has been known to exert great powers on the mindful.
In short an afterthought ending. As I remember, I was unsure about adding this somewhat strange hymn to the unmistakably explosive conclusion to this composition, but after a while I felt it was no more contradictory than the already unlikely coupling of the A and B parts. Curran David Shohl played piano, violin, harpsichord and Sundanese gamelan before beginning composition studies at UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music, where he completed his doctorate in 1999. His teachers include Nils Vigeland, David Cope and Ursula Mamlok. A native of Anchorage Alaska, he lives in New York City.