Description
Approximate Duration: 7′ 10″
Instrumentation Information:
Duet for 2 Violins.
Dedication Information:
This work was composed for and dedicated to violinists Holly Mulcahy and Mary Corbett.
World Premiere Recording
Performed on March 29th, 2017, by Holly Mulcahy and Mary Corbett at the University of Wyoming Recital Hall.
Program Notes
Chase Jordan’s duo for two violins, Fossil Lake, depicts the granite landscape in which the work’s namesake lake sits at the head of East Rosebud Creek in the Beartooth Mountains of southern Montana. The work is in ternary form, with the first section exploiting the percussiveness of pizzicato to depict the clanking of fossilized bones and the hardness of the granite rocks. This hard landscape is audible to the listener with dissonant intervals and highly percussive writing for the violins while the beauty of the landscape comes through with melodic ideas growing from the percussive lines. The second section of the work depicts the placidity of Fossil Lake, beginning simply but growing and becoming more complex depicted the almost incessant wind of the high alpine terrain at 10,000 feet of elevation. The initial theme returns, truncated reminding the listener that despite the beauty of nature, that the beauty is enhanced by the harsh environment in which it sits. As Joseph Conrad says in Heart of Darkness, “The silent wilderness surrounding this clear speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth.”
