Shattered Glass

Margaret Brouwer

2007

Flute, cello, percussion, piano

Flute doubling alto flute

Shattered Glass is like a musical kaleidoscope. Instead of seeing the constantly changing colors as you do in a kaleidoscope, you hear them. There are two contrasting yet related sound worlds. A soft but brittle atmosphere with sharp stabs of piercing sound that sometimes builds to wild cacophonous moments, and soft, blurred, mysterious sections that still have tiny intrusions of bright, pointed stabs of sound. The brittle and blurred timbres eventually mix and overlap becoming sometimes rhythmic, sometimes raucous, and sometimes mysterious and melodic. There are solos for each instrumentalist throughout the work culminating in short, rhapsodic, cadenza-like flourishes for each. Shattered Glass was written for and is dedicated to MOSAIC.