towards silos and smokestacks for Orchestra

• Main Author: Jenkins, Derek
• Other Authors: Lavenda, Richard
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Master of Music Thesis; Orchestra; Orchestra Score
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1911/71969

towards silos and smokestacks takes its name from the Silos and Smokestacks Heritage Area. In 1996, the northeast third of Iowa became a federally designated heritage area to pass on the story of American agriculture to younger generations. I spent much of my childhood growing up in Iowa. On my many trips through the state, two contrary aspects in the surrounding landscape caught my fascination. First, there are the vast cornfields that expand outwards for miles fading off beyond the horizon. Second, this countryside is home to countless grain silos and billowing smokestacks of small Midwestern cities. These monoliths can be seen miles away like small islands within Iowa’s rolling agricultural oceans. As I drew closer to these structures, they would slowly grow into colossal pillars giving a vertical, albeit fleeting, dimension to the scenery before disappearing once again into the distance. This piece is an attempt to juxtapose this sense of vastness and the monoliths that interrupt the sprawling “amber waves of grain” through the use of spatial aspects and ever expanding register.