Verklärte Einblicke

Complete Work Title: 

Verklärte Einblicke — 11 fragments from Beethoven's Op. 9 No. 3


Performance Medium: 

String trio (violin, viola, violoncello)


Duration: 

c.2:30


Dedication: 

For the Amorsima Trio.


Date Composed: 

March-April 2020


Additional Information: 
  • Composed on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, at the request of the Amorsima Trio.
  • Finalist, ICEBERG New Music 2022-23 Call for Scores.

Performance/Broadcast History: 
  • 9 September 2023; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX).— Sounds Modern "Impure Music" program
  • 13 June 2022; MISE-EN_PLACE (Brooklyn, NY)—Mise-en Music Festival
  • 2 November 2021; University of North Texas (Denton, TX) [premiere]

    Amorsima Trio: Mia Detwiler (violin), Michael Capone (viola), Kourtney Newton (violoncello)


Program Notes: 

The concept behind Verklärte Einblicke (Transfigured Glimpses) was inspired by a note that artist Jasper Johns (b. 1930) scrawled in one of his sketchbooks, which subsequently became a maxim invoked by contemporary artists, critics, and art historians:

Take an Object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. [Repeat.]

The “object” in this case is Beethoven’s String Trio, Op. 9 No. 3 — specifically, 11 fragments from this work, which are recast through a variety of transformational processes. These modified fragments are presented as a series of brief episodes, each framed by silence—evoking, in a somewhat exaggerated manner, Beethoven’s notable use of the Grand Pause in many of his own works. The Op. 9 string trios are early works in the composer's oeuvre, and as precursors to his revolutionary string quartets—arguably Beethoven's most significant contribution to Western chamber music, and themselves important vehicles for experimentation during the composer's middle and late periods—they provide a stylistic baseline for the development of musical materials in the present work.

Verklärte Einblicke was composed at the request of the Amorsima Trio, for a program of miniatures celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.  The work was premiered by the Amorsima Trio on 2 November 2021 at the University of North Texas.