Description
Written in the spring of 2010 for the Aeolus Saxophone Quartet at Northern
Arizona University, DIX is a exploration of the musical implications of the number 10. In history, the number ten is believed to be one of the most perfect numbers. For example, it was used in Pythagorean worship in form of Tetractys — an arrangement of ten dots in a pyramid that represented the organization of space in the universe. I have found interest in the number because it is intriguingly symmetrically asymmetric; separated into five (asymmetric) and two (symmetric). The entire piece was composed using these two numbers as much as possible, dictating as many aspects as possible, such as meter, phrase, form and intervals etc.