Music archive entry

"Orison" was originally written for saxophone quartet, but works equally as well as a clarinet quartet. The piece utilizes what perhaps single-reeded instruments can accomplish better than strings or other wind instruments: dynamic contrast. The music can swell from a barely audible whisper to a full organ-sized fortissimo. The unanimity of timbre allows the individual lines to blend to sound as one unit, allowing suspensions and dissonances to reach a higher amount of tension than if the timbres stood out strongly. The piece relies heavily on the build-up and release of tension, characterized by differences in dynamics. The rhythms are not complex and the harmonic language is simple, using a combination of diatonic, modal, and quartal tonalities.