In(verse)Fragments
(2009)

two clarinets, soprano, and string trio
commissioned by Jamie Jordan
Duration: 10 minutes


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While the manuscript for Aristotle's first book on Poetics is almost complete, the majority of his second book no longer exists. A hypothetical reconstruction of the second book mostly contains long passages composed by the scholar/translator with brief fragments of text from the pieces of manuscript that still exist. But a few of the fragments are clearly sentences lacking only single words. For example, "Our [next] topic is lampoons and comedy..." or "...with each of its parts [used] separately in the [various] elements..." In(verse)Fragments takes these single word additions and sets them, retaining the order presented in the reconstruction. The piece consists of eight fragments (movements), each of which exhibit qualities of loss and reconstruction. In this way the piece could be heard as a lamentation of what has been lost: an almost-certainly-great work by one of the greatest minds this world has had. Although, in some ways it is modeled after the fragments we have.