An indecipherable cause

for piano
2021

Xingyi (Betty) Chen, piano

In An indecipherable cause I undertook a purely instrumental “setting” of Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” for solo piano. Attracted by the multiplicity of perspectives that Stevens affords his blackbird, I sought even further levels of reflection by rendering the spectral components of the spoken text into quantized pitches and then subjecting the material to various levels of algorithmic processing and abstraction. The nature of the reconstruction excludes the possibility of extended techniques: I felt that this was fitting, as the piece was written for my friend Lily Koslow on their home upright during the COVID-19 pandemic. On a personal note, this poem is one that has offered me comfort in difficult times, and the process of working on it with Lily similarly provided solace and joy.

—JZ

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

March 2, 2022: performed at Eastman Composer’s Concert (Rochester, NY); Xingyi Betty Chen, piano

Fall 2021: performed on McGill Piano Studio concert (Montreal, QC); Lily Koslow, piano