Chamber Symphony

By calling my work a Chamber Symphony, I have no Neo-Classical intent; rather, I have simply designated the piece as a large scale work for chamber orchestra. Perhaps more evocative is the epigraph that appears in the score: “Punkt und Linie zu Fläche.” this is the title of a book by Kandinsky which has appeared in English as “Point and Line to Plane.” Finding analogies between the visual arts and music is a time-honored idea, and while I have not turned to specific Kandinsky works for inspiration (nor to the artist’s theories about music, theosophy and “vibrations”), I feel that the precision and abandon with which Kandinsky deploys static and active gestures on the canvas is reflected in what I have tried to do with musical “points” and “lines” on the “plane” of time. —James Primosch