my evil twin (1992) 11'

program note

I said something mean to a friend of mine once. My only excuse was that it must have been my evil twin who had said such a horrible thing. I immediately started thinking about how within each of us there are dramatic competitions between good and bad impulses—sometimes the desire to be kind is in a strange equilibrium with the desire to be cruel. My piece ”my evil twin” explores the relationship between these competing impulses. Scraps of relentlessly happy melodies struggle to be heard behind angry walls of sound. It is almost as if the presence of the naïve melodies infuriates the other instruments and they search each melody as it goes by, looking for ways to destroy it.

”my evil twin” was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, which premiered it in 1992, and I revised it in 1996. It is dedicated to my friend Mark-Anthony Turnage. Coincidentally I met him when we were both students at Tanglewood in 1983.

—David Lang

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