Program Note:

Like the painting which gives this quintet its title, František Kupka’s works are marked by an emphasis on color, shape, lyricism, and musical illusion. While he is most known for his role in pioneering abstraction and orphic cubism, my favorite of Kupka’s works are those which lie at the boundaries of all his various influence and inventions.  Each of this quintet’s three movements is inspired by one such work.

 The first, “Machinisme,” turns the quintet a large meta-instrumental machine.  The music is angular and aggressive, with sharp cuts and rigidly unfolding processes, though dramatically independent melodic lines sometimes manage to break free. “Nocturne” is far more abstract, characterized by dark, fluid, and overlapping forms.  The pulse is almost entirely lost, as expressive solo lines create a more inward, improvisatory atmosphere. The third movement follows the colorful, spinning motion of Kupka’s “Disks of Newton,” and takes on a much more playful, geometric, and contrapuntal character.

 While I hope that the influence of each painting can be heard, each movement is hardly an attempt to render the image musically.  Kupka wrote of his own work that “the painting comes first, not the idea.” It is likewise with my music.