Palimpsest: A Composition of Maps (mvts. i & ii)

Palimpsest: A Composition of Maps (an isentropic semaphore on the Name of Asmira Woodward-Page) is part of an ongoing series of soggetto cavato pieces the I have written, in this case on the name and at the commission of violinist Asmira Woodward Page. This term, originally soggetto cavato dalle parole a subject ‘carved out of the words,’ was coined by Zarlino in 1558 to denote the special class of thematic subjects for polyphonic compositions that were derived from a phrase associated with them by matching the vowels of the words to the corresponding vowels of the traditional Guidonian solmization syllables (ut re mi fa sol la). My system of transliteration derives from Ravel’s refinement of the system described by Zarlino in 1558; each letter of the alphabet ‘maps’ on to one of the 12 pitches, producing a more chromatic fundamental set than either Ravel’s or Zarlino’s system. In the second movement, A Composition of Maps, this fundamental set is presented, and then partitioned and transformed over the course of the entire piece.

It was premiered and recorded (spectacularly) by Asmira Woodward-Page (vln) and Ieva Jokubaviciute (pf). Asmira’s name is the source of the letters for the soggetto cavato

Palimpsest: A Composition of Maps by Douglas Boyce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at douglasboyce.net.