The first brokenAphorism movement (track 7) is a straightforward exposition of the four primary musical textures that will be shattered and strewn across the next two movements (see the movement title for the names of these textures). A quiet and intropective melody is interrupted by a violent and constantly moving heavy-metal ostinato. This is in turn interrupted by an impetuous, angry passage which is suddenly replaced by a quiet and meditative sequence. This is all simultaneously the first part of the first movement of the palimpsest piece, and like all such first movements is characterized by sudden, harsh transitions.

The first palimpsest movement continues, as do the fractured transitions, in the second brokenAphorism (track 8). Throughout the entire track, the "melody" section unfurls linearly, but passed continually between the piano and the cello. This is accompanied by music constantly cracked and fissured with small chunks of the other three textures.

In the next brokenAphorism (track 9), the first palimpsest movement is concluded and the second is begun halfway through. First, the cello lays down the "perpetuo" heavy metal riff, but the sound is severely restricted by a practice mute. The piano plays the delicate "melody" texture, but quickly gains confidence and builds toward a Romantic climax. The climax breaks down however, as the pianist continually shifts between its passion and frenetic outbreaks of the "perpetuo" texture. The cello—which was easily eclispsed by the power of the piano—reënters, now without the encumbrance of the mute, and the piano meekly tries to revive the "melody". An uncanny echo of the melody on a distant offstage clarinet answers, thus ushering in the second palimpsest movement. Like all such movements, instead of the harsh juxtapositions of the first, it is characterized by the gradual infection of one musical idea by another. The clarinet slowly changes the melody from the first movement into a new second movement melody while the cello and piano play a tolling major second beneath. This major second gradually collapses into the far more dissonant minor second as the third aphorism draws to a jangling close.

The second palimpsest movement continues in the fourth Aphorism (track 13). The primary action of this movement is in the piano (with an absolutely bravura performance by Dan Neustadt), which slowly morphs a calm, introspective passage ("austere") into a wild dervish of sixteenth notes ("mechanism"). The cello causes this slow devolution by taking relatively bright intervals from the piano and converting them into darker, more dissonant variants. These infect the piano passage and cause it's mutation. You might also notice two interjections from the offstage clarinet, apropos of nothing.

The final track begins as a robust, Romantic piece. However, as with the earlier parts of this second palimpsest movement, it is gradually infected by dissonance and chaos—every deviation absorbed by the increasingly threatening noise building offstage. The movement loses it's coherence, the doors open, and the offstage instruments infect the stage—drowning out the last vestiges of Romanticism with incessant reiterations of the "mechanism" motif. The confusion reigns until the final violent cutoff.

The structure of this piece is echoed visually in the score, which I'm quite proud of.