THOUSANDTH ORANGE

instrumentation: violin, viola, cello, piano

duration: 10’

premiere: 17 April 2018 in Cambridge, UK, by members of the Britten Sinfonia (Thomas Gould, vioin; Clare Finnimore, viola; Caroline Dearnley, cello; Tom Poster, piano) 

PROGRAM NOTE:

Thousandth Orange begins with a very simple 4-chord progression. Nothing fancy. Nothing extravagant. Just something quite beautiful and everyday, that is enjoyed and loved and consumed and forgotten. Something you’ve probably heard before, in a pop song or a music theory class. While considering my love of Brahms' piano quartets and my memory of playing them—and more generally how our memories of beloved music evolve over time—I began thinking about the history of still-life paintings. Those bowls of fruit we see framed in museums—sort of lovely and banal, at first glance, but then richer when considered in the long story of humans painting things that they see, over and over and over again. There's a reason that Van Gogh painted those vases of sunflowers again and again, or Caravaggio his fruit. Maybe after the tenth, or the hundredth, or the thousandth time one paints, or looks at, or eats, an orange (or plays a simple cadential figure), it is just as beautiful as the first time. There is still more to see and to hear and to love. More angles reveal themselves—more perspectives and corners and stories, more understanding—more appreciation of something that most would consider unremarkable. Thousandth Orange is about these tiny oblique revelations that time's filter can open up in a musical memory. The title also suggests a thousand different shades of the color orange, or the image of a thousand oranges, or perhaps a thousand ways of looking at an orange. 

—Caroline Shaw, 2020

A NOTE ABOUT THIS DOWNLOAD:

As usual with CS Editions, this is a digital product only. You will be able to download a zip file of pdf's. For "Thousandth Orange" I've created an additional set of pdf's (included) which are designed for players who prefer to use an ipad or other tablet to play from a score, with their own part slightly enlarged. It's a nice option to have, and I'll probably start making these for other pieces as well.