About this Work

Sisyphus for large orchestra was written in 2000 and was my first orchestral work.  It was commissioned by the South Dakota Symphony as a concert opener and so is quite brief.  The music, which I admit is highly indebted to the music of Oliver Knussen, is based on a very simple shape, that of a crescendo (one could think even more simply of a triangle), which is used at every possible level of the work’s structure, from the simplest motive down to the global form.  The title is based only loosely on the myth of Sisyphus, in that the music seems to restart itself again and again.  Like most repeated actions, however, our experience of them changes, so that the repetition is never exact.  In this sense, the music could be seen as a set of variations not on a theme but a structure, one that is so basic that it can be made into almost anything.  The work was first performed by the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra under Christine Myers.

SCORE AND PARTS ARE CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.  INTERESTED PERSONS MAY CONTACT THE COMPOSER DIRECTLY.