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OYRE’S GARDEN
Oyre’s Garden arose from my involvement with the dance department at Northwestern University. Originally a 5-part 40-minute ballet, the production fell through and the piece was shelved for 2 years. In 1986 I decided to resurrect the work, reorchestrating it for double orchestra by enhancing some of the multi-divisi string writing. Sadly, after finishing the reorchestration of the first tableau, the original manuscript and all the sketches were lost. In 1990 I revised the surviving rescoring of Tableau I to make it sound like a complete work rather than a single movement, and more recently I’ve adapted it back into the original single orchestra format.
The complete ballet told an allegorical narrative of a girl becoming a woman. In Tableau I Oyre wanders in a forest and loses her way. Terrified and exhausted, she sits down, falls asleep and starts dreaming. The rest of the ballet is a dream where she meets a young man who teaches her the ways of the forest (i.e. adulthood), relieving her fear. In the end she awakens more confident, and remembers her way home. Musically, the lost ballet score started simply and became gradually more complex as Oyre developed. The first tableau is some of the simplest music I’ve written and is based on a progression of chords, heard first in the strings after the opening cello solo.
Click here for a sample
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