In violent silence

My dissertation, In Violent Silence, takes its title from E.E. Cummings' sonnet "Notice the Convulsed Orange Inch of Moon". The piece musically reflects what I have found to be two unifying strings in the poem: the contrast of large and small, and the union of opposing ideas. To portray these elements, the nucleus of the piece is a pitch set that is harmonically rich and allows me to vacillate between tonal and non-tonal ideas. I also utilize the expansion and contraction of pitch register to reflect the dichotomy of large and small. The result is eighteen minutes of music with a clear and defined structure yet is in a state of constant change.