Angles of Repose

Angles of Repose draws the inspiration for its title from Wallace Stegner's novel about an itinerant mining engineer and his family as they struggle to prosper in the American West. In Stegner's work, the title refers simultaneously to the angle at which granular materials achieve stability on a slope and the forces of fortune and consequence that ultimately shape the lives of its protagonists. I have become increasingly interested in the way that physical forces create analogues for social, emotional, interpersonal and even musical ones. While this piece does not pictorially narrate the physical phenomenon, it aspires to translate the interplay of these forces into musical ones.