A Snare Drum Sextet
 
This piece was composed for Robert van Sice and the Yale Percussion Group in the fall of 2017. I was tasked with creating a snare drum sextet that could serve as a type of encore and contained theatrical elements.  I viewed this opportunity as a chance to reflect on my four years of master’s and doctoral study at Yale, and create a work that blended the type of chamber music that had been studying with certain elements of marching percussion from my background. The title itself refers to Pléïades by Iannis Xenakis, a masterwork of a percussion sextet that I had the privilege of performing during my time at Yale.  However, due to the stage plot of that concert, we elected not to perform the fourth and final movement from Xenakis’ sextet entitled Mélange. Dedicating this piece to that unplayed movement felt like a way for me to tie up a loose end as I finished my time with the Yale Percussion Group.  This piece, like much of my music, is intended to be a coming together of “two worlds,” that of art music and that of marching percussion.  In that way, I also felt that the inclusivity of the titled resonated with the multiple influences of the work.  
 
-Matt Keown