The receding line in a Bruegel sky

piano

7' , 2021

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Bruegel the Elder's villagers go about their daily life. Above them the sky: floating, unassuming, nearly empty. The sky, which frames the upper limits of the painting and thus for the outside viewer encloses it, at the same time opens for the villagers their scene onto the vast, infinite expanse beyond. Now and then a villager looks up at the sky, as though to be reminded of its presence, to take measure their own dwelling on the earth, to see in its emptiness a mirror of the world.

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Score sample.

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Composed for and premiered by Andrew Anderson on the occasion of House on Fire's inaugural concert at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena on December 17, 2021.

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