Matt Sargent

*Limited Edition CD in Digipack with Liner Notes.* "The Illuminations are a collection of solo and chamber works with a shared compositional language, written between 2016 and 2021. The pieces are composed as software scores, which build the musical work in real-time during each performance. Notes are introduced to the players on animated staves, slowly fading into view and then away again. Using opacity as dynamic, the musicians perform the animated staves as slow loops, with motives and contrapuntal lines gradually emerging and disappearing on each pass. The initial idea for these pieces arrived as I was editing a recording of “Tide,” my piece for ten violins and ten cellos, in 2016. The large consort of strings produced washes of overtones above the notated pitches.

I built a software patch that isolated overtones on the recording and added new harmonies around them. At the time, I thought that this generator might become a third voice within “Tide,” illuminating overtones within the texture at formal moments in the music. One afternoon, I listened to the overtone harmonizations of the Illumination patch on their own and realized that it was more beautiful as a separate composition. The upper air of Tide bloomed into the musical language of the Illuminations." - Matt Sargent