In 1974 I was a wet-behind-the-ears graduate student in composition at Columbia,  totally awed and a little scared by my first year in New York City.  My teacher, Mario Davidovsky, who I was also in awe of, said, “Write  a piece for a really awkward combination of instruments.” Trumpet, clarinet, and double bass fit the bill.

The only quiet room I could find to write in was in the attic of the  music building, right next to the elevator machine room. Only when the piece was finished did I realize that the upward sliding plucked notes from the double bass in the last movement were an unconscious mirroring of the sound of the starting and stopping elevator motor.

There’s something a little sinister about the piece. I think that’s why I picked the title Bone Songs. I took it from the title of a friend’s rather bloody collection of poems. But the last movement feels to me more like a dancing skeleton in a Halloween funhouse.

It’s touching for me to look back on this piece from thirty-two years ago and see the seeds of what my music has become since then. The piece may be standing squarely in uptight mid-70’s New York modernism, but at least one toe is extended into the freewheeling musical world we all get to live in now.

– Conrad Cummings