Orchestration

for harp and electronics

Duration

9 and a half minutes

Commissioned By/Premiere

Swift Interval was commissioned by and dedicated to Stef Van Vynckt, who premiered the work on March 21, 2026 in Brussels.

Score

This score is in exclusivity until March 2027.

Notes

The title comes from Jorie Graham’s poem “Home”: “the swift interval before evaporation, & the stillness of brimming.” A live harp plays against four electronic copies of itself, each tuned slightly flat—one by roughly a sixth of a semitone, another by a quarter tone. These near-unisons create a persistent tension—swift because the distance is so small, brimming because the sound never quite settles. I looked for other writers circling similar states of irresolution—three poems that, like the movements they inspire, bleed into one another.

I. Cactus Land draws from T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. The movement is dominated by a “xylophonic” technique—striking the string while dampening it—a brittle, prickly sound, like touching a cactus needle.

II. A Blanker Whiteness borrows from Robert Frost’s “Desert Places.” The music settles into a single diatonic field, white on white, where the subtle tuning differences between the live harp and its electronic shadows create something like depth perception—distance emerging from sameness.

III. No Detail Too Small takes its name from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sandpiper.” The finale exploits the harp’s ability to play identical pitches on different strings, then multiplies this across all five harps, turning the smallest details into a kaleidoscopic blur.

Notes on Electronics

Swift Interval incorporates a stereo prerecorded audio track that should blend seamlessly with the live harp. The technical setup requires a Mac or PC with a multi-channel digital audio workstation (Logic, Max, or Ableton Live), an audio interface with three or more channels (two for audio track, one for click), stereo speakers, and an earpiece for the harpist. For amplified performances, high-quality condenser microphones with clean reverb (2-4 seconds) will achieve optimal blend between electronic and acoustic elements. This work may also be performed without amplification.