Written as the culmination of my studies at Florida State University, my first chamber symphony is an account of personal journey of learning to live out of love rather than fear. Written as a sequel of sorts to my saxophone octet dealing with the wake of my father’s suicide, my chamber symphony takes the previous focus of simply processing grief and transforms it from a story of survival to one of actualization and recovery. The musical material of the piece is a deep study into polytonality – to be specific, just how different varying concepts of polytonality can be. These explorations are presented in a spectrum across the four movements, starting with a tense, atonal polychord approach before arriving at lush, jazz-influenced slash chords to end the work. The crux of the work is the metaphorical analog between healing from grief and the transformation of representative musical materials. These two interwoven concepts are crucial to the theoretical and programmatic structure of the entire work.

This piece is dedicated to my composition professors at Florida State for pushing me to new musical heights as well as my wife, for helping me to become more of the person I’ve always hoped to be.