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Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Society with the generous support of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music.

  • 4(picc.afl).2+ca.3+bcl.4+cbn/4222/3perc/str
  • 14 min
    • 24th January 2025, Jones Hall, Houston, TX, United States of America
    • 25th January 2025, Jones Hall, Houston, TX, United States of America
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Programme Note

METACOSMOS is constructed around the natural balance between beauty and chaos – how elements can come together in (seemingly) utter chaos to create a unified, structured whole. The idea and inspiration behind the piece, which is connected as much to the human experience as to the universe, is the speculative metaphor of falling into a black hole – the unknown – with endless constellations and layers of opposing forces connecting and communicating with each other, expanding and contracting, projecting a struggle for power as the different sources pull on you and you realize that you are being drawn into a force that is beyond your control.

As with my music generally, the inspiration behind METACOSMOS is not something I am trying to describe through the piece - to me, the qualities of the music are first and foremost musical. When I am inspired by a particular element or quality, it is because I perceive it as musically interesting, and the qualities I tend to be inspired by are often structural, like proportion and flow, as well as relationships of balance between details within a larger structure, and how to move in perspective between the two — the details and the unity of the whole.

Programme note © 2017 Anna Thorvaldsdottir

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Anna Thorvaldsdottir: METACOSMOS

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