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20, 25 years. I’d like to make all my pieces Untitled 1, 2, 3, 4”17 While the latter has not
happened yet, her confession “I came to college as a contextual being and I’ve been
growing out if it ever since” rings true in several of her instrumental works from the
twenty-first century.18 Opera and vocal music still makes up a large portion of her output,
but when she does focus on instrumental writing, her music seems much more about
rhythm, sound, infinity, and life as an American artist and much less about storytelling. In
thinking about her compositional process from the early part of her career, she relates:
I did not see how someone could clear their mind and Iistenjust for the
abstract quality of music. I really could not see that, although theoretically
I believed it. Physically I did not believe it. And I suppose that the journey
that Γm on is of understanding and now experiencing that in fact it is
possible and beautiful.19
'7 Ibid.
18 ,
Erdmann, 7.
'9 Ibid.