Persistent Memory was written in 1995-96 in memory of Lily Auchincloss, who sponsored my Rome Prize. Accordingly I started it while in Rome (since I wasn't that good at doing like the Romans) and I wrote a long elegy movement emanating from the opening five note melody in cellos.
The piece was commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the contract specified exactly how many players in each string section: 5-4-3-3-1. That gave me the idea of melodic lines with "split ends", as in melodies that cadence, however strongly or weakly, on chords that emerge within each section, depending on how many players were available. The elegy is split up into all strings, all winds, all strings, and finishes on a 16 note chord — the number of string players.
The elegy goes attacca into a kind of scherzo movement, cast as four variations (on the elegy music), a scherzo in compound time plopped right there in the middle, and four more variations. Weird form, huh? The fifth variation, the one right after the scherzo, recaptures the slowness of the elegy music, and gives the first horn a high, difficult melody before resuming as fast music. That is the "persistent memory" of the title (as well as the obvious "in memory of"). I wrote the second movement at Yaddo in 1996, more than a year after I wrote the elegy, because teaching and kid's ballet to write. You can view the complete sketch for the piece here.
The piece was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. The recording is tracked, even though the movements are designed to be attacca.
