Edward Jacobs

Wind Ensemble

Composer's Note:

Playing with colors"”in this case sound-colors, or timbre"”is a composer's idea of fun. Each note, harmony, and instrument has its own color. And the fun arises from creating combinations of colors, passing ideas from one instrumental color to another, and in hearing how such colors change at different volumes and intensities. In this piece, I had a lot of fun exploring the broad palette of the wind ensemble colors, and this focus led me to the title of Prismata, a plural form of prism.

But another meaning of the word prismata has also been on my mind: perspective. There are only a few ideas at the heart of this music. But each idea, whether melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic, is heard differently at different moments in the music. Sometimes little melodies are heard very clearly in a flute, and sometimes all the notes of that little melody are heard simultaneously in the brass"”a rhythm may be heard clearly in a drum at one moment, returning later as a newly adopted rhythm of a familiar melody. Over the course of Prismata's thirteen minutes, these few ideas come to the foreground in all the band's voices at some point. And at the piece's conclusion, the chorale which has been the harmonic underpinning of all Prismata's music is heard in overlapping statements in the winds and brass"”different colors, and different speeds.

Prismata was written in the fall, 2022 for William Staub and the players of the East Carolina University Wind Ensemble, and first performed in Greenville, NC on April 18, 2023, William Staub conducting.