D a v i d   V e s s

Light Falls on a Winter Garden is the first work that I wrote after having moved from Boston, MA to Miami, FL to pursue my doctorate at the University of Miami. I had left cold winter of the North for the land of Eternal Summer. The music evokes the imagery of the cold winter months - the heavy stillness, the cold wind blowing, the almost-silence of snow falling. From this wintery stillness comes a brief moment when the clouds open up and for a brief moment, the sun shines down onto the wintery landscape. This piece captures this moment with a slow moving and ascending melody in the first violin. Inside the cello part is a small echo of another piece that I wrote called …hears it, glowing…. I am a big fan of authors like David Mitchell and Stephen King who have small connections to their other works. Hears it, glowing… is about imagining the heat of the sun becoming so intense that it confuses one sense from another - that’s why you hear the glowing and taste the color. Since that piece is about imaging sunlight - I placed small echo of it here. Unlike most of my music, the harmony is extremely static in this work - an intentional choice to frame the ‘capture this moment’. There is only one large harmonic shift before the coda. The music dissolves into the heavy emptiness of the cold, waiting an eternity for the next time that Light Falls on a Winter Garden.