Between Thought and Thing

Between Thought and Thing, scored for flute, trumpet, horn, violin, viola, cello, piano and percussion, was written for the contemporary music ensemble at SUNY Stony Brook. The title derives from Coleridge, who used the phrase as an aphoristic description of the essential nature of representational painting. Painters often present the viewer with highly realistic depictions of things which do not actually exist. The irony becomes extreme in artistic movements such as surrealism. Music cannot really be said to be representational in the way a painting may be. Yet of a piece of music often acts as a powerful metaphor suggesting physical movements or emotional states. Analogous to the painter, the composer presents to his audience sonic metaphors for intense experiences which may be pulled directly from the imagination. These various musings on the nature of the musical experience went into the composition of the kaleidoscopically colored atmospheres, and both subtle and dramatic expressive contrasts, depicted in Between Thought and Thing.