THE STORY BEHIND: Nathan's "the space of a door"

RIPHIL • Mar 11, 2022

On March 19, Bramwell Tovey and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present Grieg's Piano Concerto with pianist Joyce Yang.

THE STORY BEHIND: Nathan's the space of a door

Title: the space of a door
Composer: Eric Nathan (1985- )
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: This is a RI Philharmonic Orchestra premiere. This piece is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Eric Nathan has emerged as a prominent young American composer. His higher education includes degrees from Yale, Indiana, and Cornell universities. In addition, he has worked at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and enjoyed a fellowship (2010) at The Music Center (TMC). Presently, Nathan is on the Music Faculty of Brown University.

A major circumstance in Nathan’s career has been his association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director, Andris Nelsons, who commissioned the space of a door in 2016 and premiered it in November of that year. Another important connection has been with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. In addition, Nathan has been honored with several fellowships and residencies.

For the title of Nathan’s ten-minute orchestral work, the composer chose a rather cryptic line from the second stanza of Samuel Beckett’s poem, “my way is in the sand flowing”:

"my peace is there in the receding mist when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds and live the space of a door that opens and shuts"

The initial stimulus for the space of a door came from Nathan’s first visit to Providence’s venerable Athenaeum. He writes:

"[The Athenaeum] was my starting point, providing a kind of scaffolding . . . as I filtered my musical ideas through the emotions experienced during the months working on it, including a sense of personal loss from the sudden death of one of my closest mentors, composer Steven Stucky. The piece takes a journey through a series of interconnected worlds punctuated by sections featuring massive, asynchronous textures in the strings, where each player is asked to play individually within the collective, as if a soloist. These sections are set against moments of stillness and fragility. A fast, wildly agitated section lies at the middle."

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The Rhode Island Philharmonic is funded in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders. Financial support is also provided by the Providence Tourism Council.