Codex Praxis

Written in 2019 for ensemble (open, but originally written as soprano voice, throat singing, percussion, harp, theobro, violin, viol da gamba) (100 minutes)

Original Note:

The act of, and the movement of all things: together.

Here, I have attempted to express what could be seen, and what might be I heard in the best ways I could. Standard practice has left a gap in creative impulse; how can we document the creative drive at initiation? It’s about asking questions about the nature and tools of creation and engaging that world. 

Longer Notes:

 First, the part about the show:

 I wrote this for the Blanton Museum of Art’s gallery opening called “Medieval Monsters” – a gallery opening of illuminated medieval manuscripts and bestiaries. At the time, I was trying to reach out to a ton of galleries in Texas to try and set up concerts, try and do some sort of touring in spaces that were institutionalized but also non-academic in some way. Or –I’ll admit –at least, to try and find places that had some sort of prestige or a way to connect to a different zone than the one that I’d been working in. That ended up being an abject failure, and basically every museum I reached out to said “no way” or ghosted me. Alas, it’s a fickle thing trying to put your work out there like that. That said, the Blanton did show interest and we got a conversation going about writing and performing the piece at the gallery opening.

 Actually, they forgot about our conversation… and double booked the show… but I was contracted first, so I guess it all ended up working out in the end… although there were a few awkward emails and phone calls along the way. It was a super weird show. I was playing gamba and a drunk rich elderly woman brought a chair next to me and started asking what I was doing while I was playing; clearly, we were furniture to these folks. Still, ya play the gig, ya see some art, ya get out of there.

 Then, the part about the writing: this feels slightly intimidating because these piece feels like a big moment in my creative life for a ton of reasons. Because of this, I think it might be better for me to just down these ideas and this history in fragments and auto-writing, and then re arrange them into something that feels like an order…

 I wanted this piece to feel like it was a found manuscript, a concept I revisited with Vespers; because of this, I wanted it to feel like a book, a codex. I have come back to this concept a few times with Codex Vivere and Codex Symphonia as well, and you can read more about them as a series in my Dissertation. I read a lot: a lot of fiction, a lot of poetry, and lot of non-fiction… I’m rather obsessed with books and language and writing, and I flirted with the idea of becoming a writer for a long time… you might even say this whole project of writing histories and extended notes for my pieces is me scratching that itch in any way I can. So this, the other Codex pieces, my Preludes, and a ton of other pieces in my catalog feel like books, or at least I thought about them in that way while I was writing them. Importantly, it’s not always a narrative thing… I love books that have no plot!

 Rather, for this piece, I was thinking about it as a “found ritual” – thinking of myself as a historian in a church and finding an ancient text, trying to piece it together. Or thinking about myself like Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who witnessed and documented the Volga Vikings in the 10th century. I read mythology, medieval bestiaries, became obsessed with the liturgical dramas of Hildegard, and read St. John of the Cross. The piece is not religious, it's quasi-religious, it’s fantasy and mythology. In way, it’s a liturgical drama: I visualized the whole piece as an opera or an ancient ritual from a forgotten people somewhere on an island off of northern Europe that sunk into the ocean. Like St. Ethernan, whom we know almost nothing but still venerate: read the Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie.

 Praxis: a think that is done, an act, not a theory or an idea. While I might daydream about mythology, we stll need to be doing something… I daydreamed about interaction and different ways of finding play and making together.

 I started writing this piece in Haan, Germany while with Antoine Beuger. We never talked about the piece beyond the concepts I was thinking about.

This was my first first collaboration with Júlia Coelho. I met Júlia at UNT at the concert of an undergrad composer’s senior recital. I don’t remember the details of this, but there was some drama about the composer being extremely disorganized (go figure) and the original soprano bailing at the last minute as a result (which wouldn’t surprise me – there’s a reason I’m not naming the composer). Júlia (graciously) stepped in with only a dress rehearsal, and performing amazingly (from what I could tell). Regardless of that back-story, the important part is that Júlia’s voice is quite literally the voice in my head when I think of vocal writing: early music, clear, “pure.” I love Júlia’s voice, and her specialization in early music (as well as neither of us having left or goth phase) made her the perfect collaborator for this project.

I’m a bassist by trade, hack-fraud cellist when I need to be, and because of this piece and my connection to Júlia and the early music crew at UNT, I became a some-time gamba player. Never with strong facility, but I think of myself as a competent musician and can figure it out… at least there’s frets.

My friend Alina Petrova asked to play this piece with Kymatic ensemble – which lead to the piece being played at sunset at the base of radio telescope in the mountains in Armenia…

I can’t believe this piece has been performed more than once, in full, without my being there…