
Austin White
Composer
Music
Work Title (2020) for alto saxophone ~6:30
Written for Eric Villalta
Work Title explores the musical possibilities of multiple senses of time existing at once. The piece is loosely inspired by visual artworks that suggest overlapping moments or actions, such as
Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 and The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Rather than illustrating these works directly, I was interested in translating their
sense of temporal overlap into sound. Throughout the piece, musical ideas interrupt and collide with one another, creating the feeling of different time layers happening simultaneously. At
other moments, material repeats in cycles, while elsewhere rhythms are stretched or compressed through augmentation and diminution, subtly shifting the listener’s sense of pacing and flow.
The title itself was unplanned: it originated as an accidental entry on a submission form. I ultimately kept it, treating it as a kind of ready-made—an unexpected but fitting frame for a piece
shaped by coincidence, overlap, and disrupted continuity.