Nico Muhly

Radiant Music

Radiant Music was written for flautist Alice K. Dade at her request for a short recital piece. The tape part is made up of several episodes of shimmering music for flutes, dulcimers organs, and sampled baroque strings, trumpet, and choir. This piece attempts obsess over a repeated sequence of chords - this progression appears in the opening bars of the piece. This sequence reappears in each episode as a harmonic goal for the flute, whose part circumnavigates it but never hits it exactly. Also at play in Radiant Music is a notion of fast music that moves slowly versus slow music that moves quickly. This is most evident in the Throbbing music which is very fast, but has an immensely slow harmonic motion, and in the conclusion, which is made of one chord reworked over a long stretch of time. Radiant Music is dedicated to Alice K. Dade, with thanks to Alex Sopp, who edited the part in 2007.