Bang on a Can

When you notate a piece and give it to a performer, there's a certain level of abstraction in that you've imagined this sound, translated it onto paper, and then asked somebody to actually create it. What I love about electronic music is you make each individual instance of sound directly by hand. It's intimate, almost painterly. You mix your colors. That has informed my writing for instruments as well, because I always try to think of the instrument parts in this same tactile, physical way. Winter Aconites premiered at the Bang On A Can festival in 1993 on a concert that was a tribute to John Cage. I received the commission just a few months after he died, and the piece was written in memory of him. I didn't know John Cage real well, but I did technical work for him in some of his computer music pieces. Also, my husband is a writer and scholar who wrote a book about him. Every now and then I would go to John's apartment to meet my husband. Sometimes we'd have lunch there. John and I would often talk about his beautiful collection of plants. He loved flowers and plants, and I do, too. Winter aconites are flowering bulbs, like tulips or daffodils. They are small flowers that look like buttercups and come up early in the spring. They also spread and naturalize if they are left to their own devices. One night, not long after I got the commission, I had a dream in which I went to visit John and I brought him a pot of these winter aconite bulbs, and he was delighted. Then we made sandwiches with the flowers. It was one of those inexplicable things, but it was a happy dream. After I woke up, I thought, That's what I'll name the piece--Winter Aconites. With bulb flowers, you put these small, brown, shrivelled up bulbs in the ground in the fall. Come spring you never quite believe that the flowers are going to come up, but they do. It's almost an act of faith. For me, there's something very comforting about that idea in relation to thoughts about death. There's a metaphor in the way these bulb flowers grow of something that lives after death or that which goes on. John Cage was a big influence on me. Often when I mention the debt I feel my music owes to him, people will say, But your music doesn't sound anything like his. Which is true. But one thing that I continue to try to work on in my music and admire so much in his, is this ability to let things happen rather than make them happen. It's very difficult. --Frances White