WOLF

for string trio, harp, alto saxophone, and electronics

2023

I have always been fascinated by wolves. While feared as predators throughout history, humans cultivated meaningful relationships with these creatures, associating them with protection, loyalty, and wildness. They have been revered as spiritually significant and served prominent roles in many mythologies throughout the globe.

Today, The presence of wolf populations has been a topic of passionate debate in North America and around the globe. Seen as a representation of wildness itself, they become the object of man’s biblical desire to dominate and control the world, exhibiting the belief that humanity exists “above” nature rather than within it.

Wolf pack. Lone wolf. Thrown to the wolves. Big bad wolf. Wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Even within music, wolves are associated with that which is typically unwanted, as in wolf tone, which describes "an undesirable phemonenon” (commonly found on the D string of a cello) that occurs when the played note is close to a particularly powerful natural resonant frequency of the body of the instrument. That which is uncontrollable is unwanted. A wolf fifth, meanwhile, describes the interval of an imperfect fifth which occurs in certain tuning systems, such as Pythagorean and meantone.

Margaret Atwood stated that “All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is". In WOLF, I am interested in investigating facets of these stories—wolf as predator, protector, mother, seer. What do these stories we tell about wolves say about us?

premiere: June 26, 2023 by .abeceda new music ensemble at Bled Castle in Bled, Slovenia