Instrumentation:
flute
violin
viola
cello

Duration:
around 5:45

Premiere:
December 21, 2019 – Santa Fe, NM
@ Paradiso Santa Fe,
Bonnie Schmader, flute
Sitara Schauer, violin
Cory McBride, viola
Elizabeth Purvis, cello

If you’d like to purchase a pdf version of the score and parts for Morika 森香 The Scent of the Forest, drop me a line. Cost: $10

Morika 森香 The Scent of the Forest is the second piece in the series collected in the album Daughter, we will name you.

Background

Having already written the piece Amane, to celebrate my friends’ first daughter, it was inevitable I would be writing a new piece for Amane’s sister, Morika.

The family continued its tradition of giving its children poetic Japanese names. Morika 森香 means “scent of the forest” in Japanese. The music for this piece came to me while riding buses in the Denver metro area, somehow the irregular motion and rhythmic sounds of travel in the city translated into the crisp footfalls of a trek into the forest. The forests of Colorado are dry and airy, inviting you upward and out into the large expanses of the plateaus and valleys, and I think the piece carries some of this upward and outward feeling.

I sketched out a couple instrumentations, but what ended up making the most sense was adding a flute to a string trio. The strings provide a solid ground of harmony the flute can soar and flutter over. The scent of the forest carries on the wind, let’s say, and fills the neighboring atmosphere.

Overall the character of the piece is driven, passionate, and resolute, balanced by a sense of consistency and direction. I also feel a sense of being drawn into and changed by a greater mystery. Is this Morika’s character, her destiny? I can’t say, of course. I’ve just charted out a little path that she might take, if it entices her.

The piece was written and performed in 2019 at a small concert, where Morika was surrounded by friends and family.