Yosemite and the Range of Light
… is a multi-movement orchestral work-in-progress. The concept behind this work is that the individual pieces – twenty-three movements in all – range in duration from a minute to over 20 minutes, and the orchestration varies from chamber orchestra to large symphonic orchestra. It is modular in its construction; that is, the various movements can either stand on their own, be performed in pairs and smaller sets, or the complete work may be performed in its entirety. Being a visual artist, I thought it would be interesting for the conductor to act as curator, selecting and ordering the music to suit the program and forces at hand. Depending on the juxtaposition of pieces, each performance will have a unique structure and personality of its own.
‘Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning,
a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings
still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld.
At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California,
level and flowery,
like a lake of pure sunshine,
forty or fifty miles wide,
five hundred miles long,
one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae.
And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra,
miles in height,
and so gloriously colored and so radiant,
it seemed not clothed with light but wholly composed of it,
like the wall of some celestial city....
Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called,
not the Nevada or Snowy Range,
but the Range of Light.
And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it,
rejoicing in its glorious floods of light,
the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes,
the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks,
the flush of the alpenglow,
and the irised spray of countless waterfalls,
it still seems above all others the Range of Light.’
The Mountains of California, John Muir, 1894