Ianarius (2019) for violin solo
5’
Miranda Cuckson, violin.
Our name for the month of January is derived from that of the Roman god Janus: the two-faced god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. I composed this piece in late January, in a simultaneously looking-backward-looking-forward mood.
I had recently written a lot of difficult, high-energy music, and I wanted to step away from that mode and make this violin solo much simpler in style.
Looking back to my musical beginnings, I devised much of the harmonic material by simply putting my fingers on a violin fingerboard in cool shapes or configurations to see what sound combinations might result—much as I did as a 12-year-old beginning guitarist. 12-year-old metal-head-me also thought that the title track of Metallica's “And Justice For All...” was exactly what ancient Roman music sounded like (36-year-old-me still sort of thinks that), so this piece is a sort of homage to and a reworking or re-imagining of the Metallica song. -D.G.