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Program notes for Holden’s composition Poetry. More to come later, for other works. See details about our composition recital and RSVP here. Poetry is a five-movement piano suite. Poetry is “vastly complex and motivically interwoven.” Poetry is gorgeous; Poetry is clever; Poetry is personal. Poetry is lonely and frantic, delicate and wistful, plain and broad, playful and ecstatic. Poetry is the piece of music I love most. —a distant dissonance— repeated thrice. Repeated forever, perhaps, without the interruption—a bass note that imposes upon the chord. Now the world was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep […] And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Anxious light from a single spark—but light indeed. The chord unravels, elaborates upon itself; a lonely voice emerges. Prelude is the lurching of an unstable world, a world torn in two: emptiness, formlessness, distant dissonances juxtaposed with all the possibilities the spark brings. A glint on a

Program notes for Holden’s composition Poetry. More to come later, for other works. See details about our composition recital and RSVP here. Poetry is a five-movement piano suite. Poetry is “vastly complex and motivically interwoven.” Poetry is gorgeous; Poetry is clever; Poetry is personal. Poetry is lonely and frantic, delicate and wistful, plain and broad, playful and ecstatic. Poetry is the piece of music I love most. —a distant dissonance— repeated thrice. Repeated forever, perhaps, without the interruption—a bass note that imposes upon the chord. Now the world was formless and empty, dar