(score excerpt below)
This trio is in three very short movements with a sort of programmatic element that is actually focused on my own and the perfomers’ reactions to a few instances of superimposed notation (like you can see below in the piano’s 4th bar) - the performers’ role is a dramatic one, whereas mine is behind the scenes trying to “harmonize” these jumbles of music.
This is the one of the first pieces I used that sort of notation in and it is based on music from my solo piano piece Wilderness and Self-Sufficiency (Book takes the idea further but is not based on Wilderness). In The Beginning of Weight the pianist is asked to interpret this superimposed notation in relation to the meter, but is not instructed to perform the pitch material in any particular way. My hope is that different pianists will have different reactions to the illegibility.
The Beginning of Weight
willredman.com