Mikel Kuehn - Works
Sfumato (2019), for large orchestra (3333.4331/ timp/ 3 perc., harps, piano, celesta /16,14,12,10,8)
This work will receive its world premiere on October 19, 2019 by the BGSU Philharmonia (Emily Freeman Brown, conductor).
Please check back for more information and a live stream link.
Program Note
My orchestral work Sfumato (2019) was composed for the Bowling Green Philharmonia (Emily Freeman Brown, conductor) across residencies at the MacDowell Colony (2018), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2019), and throughout the 18-19 academic year. During this period I had many conversations with visual artists and writers about basic formal ideas and how they can be similar across disciplines. The Italian word sfumato, which roughly translates as “from smoke,” dates from the Italian Renaissance period and describes a painting technique for smoothly transitioning from one color to another, as these areas can often resemble a smokey haze when closely observed. The rendering of subtle facial features in Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is one example of this. However, where there is smoke there is often fire, and this technique can also be used to indirectly enhance hard outlines by making them more dramatic, pushing the visual into more obvious perceptual layers such as foreground, middle ground, and background. When composing, I often think in terms of abstract images or scenes and how these might be connected, transformed, or manipulated to create a larger form. In March of 2019 I spent some time in Florence, Italy, and visited several of Leonardo’s paintings; the sheer awe at seeing these masterpieces inspired the underlying idea on which to “paint” the material of the piece. In my Sfumato, sfumato is portrayed by the classic aspects discussed above, most notably in terms of orchestration and timbre (the musical analog of color), but also through exaggerated shapes which are softened with a deliberate blurring of various degrees. These may occur quickly though several instruments fused into a single gesture, or a larger texture may slowly transform over time (for example, a brass choir gradually emerges and gains focus in the middle of the piece).
