This short work is a contemporary reimagining of a Sapphic ode. I looked to modern interpretations of Greek music, listening to albums of instrumental and vocal recreations of Antiquity (as well as Classical texts) to develop my tonal language, and utilized a variety of extended techniques on the horn — pitch bending with the embouchure and right hand, full- and half-stopping, lip trills — to emulate the sound of the ancient Greek aulos. As for the lyrical content, I again looked toward the poems of Sappho for direction, breaking down a short fragment into its most basic linguistic elements — along with distilling the general tone of the work — to then generate my own text.
Griffin Botts is a horn player from South Central Kentucky currently finishing his studies at the Yale School of Music. When not toiling away on the standard orchestral repertoire, he occupies himself with the transcription of Viola da Gamba works for brass, breathing new life into these compositions of old.