Every Night a Dream Visits Us (2023)

for Chamber Orchestra (9 min.)

Like many composers, much of my work is in reaction to the work of other artists, poets, and musicians, and my work for the Durham Symphony Orchestra is no exception. I first had the opportunity to engage with Alfred Kubin’s artwork when visiting the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Known especially for its collection of symbolist and expressionist works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in particular, the Leopold houses one of the largest collections of Austrian work from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Though his work wasn’t included in the Nazi 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition (which epitomized the party’s anathematic reaction toward Jewish creativity of the Weimar period), Kubin’s pieces was soon grouped with the other “degenerate artists” due to his frequent fantastical expressionism and his macabre subject matter. His “Jede Nacht besucht uns ein Traum” (“Every Night a Dream Visits Us”) depicts a nude female figure rapidly descending upon a field, rousing a whirlwind of dust and debris, bending stalks toward their breaking point. Her extremities are depicted with scythe-like shadows, her entire head clothed in a sable mask bound by coal-black ribbons that linger in her wake.

My reaction to the work attempts to build upon the spirit of the image across a time-based art form. The scene seems to exist outside any clear specification of time, and I explore both the complete suspension musical time through impossibly slow sustains in the strings and rapid progression of time through quick shifts in thematic materials and instrumentation, creating the sharp juxtapositions of moments that can only occur in our imaginary states. Melodies are harmonized almost exclusively with dissonant intervals, decisively cutting through rustling orchestral textures while simulating the tone colors of instruments that can only exist within our imaginations. The fantastical figurine departs as quickly as she arrives, leaving the scene eviscerated by her absence.

Every Night a Dream Visits Us was commissioned as part of a 2022–2023 residency with the Durham Symphony Orchestra, William Henry Curry, conductor.

Jede Nacht besucht uns ein Traum (1900)
Alfred Kubin