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Your Shadow, Passing By

By thisisuser on October 21, 1998

for large orchestra (3,3,3,3/4,3,3,1/harp,2perc,timp/strings)
composed September 1998; duration 7 minutes
commissioned by the Odense Symphony Orchestra
world premiere Odense (Denmark) November 5th 1998
Odense Symphony Orchestra; Tamas Vetö – conductor

This composition is the third in a total of four orchestral pieces, composed as part of Graugaard’s stay as composer-in-residence with the Odense Symphony Orchestra. Being by far the shortest of them all, it is based on the single phrase of a developing line of melodic and textural structures, rising into the entire register of the orchestra in a tutti ppp.

Transparency of texture is predominant, as intensity rises in a sound-world of evading contours. Jagged chords and occasional outbursts of abrupt figures in the heavy brass attempt to push the music into a larger discourse than the mere 7 minutes will permit, but at a single stroke a new course is set with the appearance of a huge, transparent tissue. Slowly, the music mounts into the highest register, accentuated by final dramatic statements by the double basses in the high register.

The concern for fleeting, weightless textures echoes back to the large scale orchestral work Sated Bodies of 1993, yet the attention given here is entirely different. In the latter piece, relief is found in the hesitant character of the subdued moments, whereas in the present piece it becomes the central statement. But the mere totality of the concluding sound-being in Your Shadow, Passing By is a characteristic element of Graugaard’s orchestral writing, and can also be found in the third song in the songs for soprano and orchestra Four Songs – of Desire and Sadness (1996-97).

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