Hours: Portrait of our Lives

SKU: P2.80147

Composer Raymond Clark, III says, This work was written with inspiration from the concept of time-lapse photography and videography. It is quite like background music to the scene of stepping back and just watching life from the corner of a busy city street, or even perhaps a bird's eye view from the top of a skyscraper. From the interaction between the cars in traffic, and the people walking on the side walk, the music was written to be a portrait of, not so much one particular life, but the huge combination of busy lives we see when we look at time-lapse videos and photos of cities. In the 3 movements, this piece uses the music to take the listener on a 24 hour journey from one morning through the following hours of errands and business in the first movement. Then, during the second movement, the listener is taken to the slower evening and late night period, where it would be rather quieter on most days. The final movement moves the listener through the pre-sunrise hours to the next morning, showing the fight through the rush hours and the race to get through the commotion of city interaction to the destinations that people need to go. Throughout the piece, the music emulates the effects of time-lapse photography and the hectic lives of the busy people by evoking senses of both urgency and peacefully passing time, along with images of people and vehicle lights that linger on even after the source has left. These concepts are very easy to portray by writing for euphonium, as the instrument is agile with rapid performance abilities, and also has a very full, mellow sound which gives great sounding sustained notes. Both of these qualities let the instrument mimic the miniscule aspects of everyday life, as well as the elements of human interaction that hover over a lifetime; it's perfect for painting a portrait of our lives..