Viola Solo - Level 5 - Digital Download SKU: A0.912917 Composed by Brandon Nelson. Concert,Contemporary. Individual part. 7 pages. Brandon Nelson #1998627. Published by Brandon Nelson (A0.912917). A set of intriguing, contrasting miniatures for unaccompanied viola. Aimed at higher level players, this piece is ideal for any concert or recital setting. The first in this set, from darkness, rising, is a lyric caprice which gradually moves from darker modes to brighter modes (locrian to lydian). The next selection, Eidólons, has a veiled, mysterious quality. In this piece, I explore variations based on rhythmic alteration. An eidólon is a spirit or phantasm; the term was a favorite of American poet Walt Whitman. The third entry, Homeostatic, is built upon a concept I refer to as biofeedback music. In this case, I took regularly-spaced readings of my pulse rate and blood oxygen saturation percentage and performed basic arithmetic operations on these figures, the results of which I used to determine a number of musical facets (most notably the essential constituents of the rhythmic gestures). The final piece, Sapta Bodhyanga, I built on a wedge concept (in this case, seven intervals, each becoming larger, ending with the octave). The number seven also features prominently in the design of the rhythmic motives (with chance procedures used in the deployment of these figures). Given the concentration on this number and the use of aleatoric methods, I titled this piece after the Zen Buddhist concept sapta-bodhyang, or seven degrees of enlightenment.
