Will Rowe

Flute and Snare Drum

Program note from the composer:

The only thing worse than getting bed bugs is finding out you’re allergic to them. I’ve never experienced an itch that intense in my life – one that overrides any other sensory input when inflamed, and still screams for your attention when subsided. ITCH was composed amid acquiring and exterminating these tiny bastards, and served as a cathartic means of enduring those sensations.

The flute’s constant unpitched flutter tongue combined with the brushes and thumb rolls on the snare drum illustrate the itchy and burning sensations in various extremes. At times, they swell at regular and accelerating rates: when an itch is this bad, you can feel your own pulse in the bite, and the stress of enduring it plus fighting the need to scratch can send your heartrate through the roof.  Of course, the itch must mercifully subside eventually, and all that’s left are the last couple pinpricks before fizzling out entirely. Eerily, the sensory memory of that sensation can be felt on the skin like an image burned into a screen.

I hope that hearing this piece is the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing this for yourself.