Dandelion (2022): The dandelion is a very common plant where I live; it has a yellow flower and long, winged leaves. Often overlooked, it is usually regarded as a weed, but it has a simplicity to it that I find attractive, along with its iconic transformation when the flowers turn to light, feathery seeds that blow away in any light wind. It is a blessing in the garden, the bees love it. Walt Whitman called dandelions “innocent, golden, calm as the dawn”; John Clare saw them as “fallen stars on a green sea of grass.”
The name dandelion comes from the French “dents de lion” or lion’s tooth, referring to the jagged leaves. When I told him the title, Milan wrote me: “dandelion is a beautiful word also in my mother language (Slovak) – “púpava” [pronounced pu:pava], and also in Czech, where I live – “pampeliška” [pronounced pampelishka].”
This flower became a musical metaphor for the simple materials I am often attracted to: melodies, harmonies, still moments, fragments. I like to look at material through the process of variation – the subtle changes that allow us to experience things in a new way. Just like each flower is in some way different – as we ourselves are somehow different each day – the melodies and fragments are always evolving throughout the piece.
My compositions are acoustic instrumental works, often slow and quiet in nature, sometimes described as introspective, and always based in explorations of colour, harmony, and texture as well as something I might call mood, or atmosphere. My pieces are intended to be subtle, focused more on the small change or transformation rather than the large, dramatic statement. They do however have their own sense of an unfolding narrative, and are not without drama, though it is a drama of an interior, quiet kind.
Milan Pala and I have never met. We were put into contact by Adrian Democ (a composer whose work I like so much; and we have also never met!). The invitation to compose a longer work was both a challenge and a gift. The challenge was how to allow a work to unfold over a greater span of time, how to sustain a longer thought. The gift is that it allowed me to approach the process differently, to dwell in the material, so that we can be saturated in its qualities. It’s a relief to me to be able to live in music in this way, to stay with an experience for a longer time, something our rushed and nervous world doesn’t always make room for. It’s a chance to move inward, into the sounds, into the thoughts and sensations. I think of it as being inside the music, the way we can be drawn into nature, like viewing a sunset, where we are wrapped in its changing light, or the way we are transfixed by the repetitious yet ever-changing sea. When I compose a longer work, I feel I’m not so much creating the music, but observing it as it unfolds. It’s a wonderful thing to be in the company of a violin. I am so grateful to Milan Pala for inviting me to write this piece, and for his interpretation and performance.
