The title, Seiend (“Being”)–pronounced “zye-ent”–is a somewhat unused German participle found primarily in philosophical writings, referring to the ‘true and honest self’, a life lived without pretenses or embellishments. It is also an acronym for “Eidens” and is dedicated to my first music teacher, Gene Eiden, and through Gene to his wife Francis whose support made Gene’s seemingly unending generosity possible.
The staged performance contains several symbolic references to Mr. Eiden and his long-time roles as band leader and solist. First, a solo trumpet is isolated from the quintet and appears front-of-stage throughout the work. The soloist turns, at times, to play with the quartet and even sits facing them at one point, acting as their “director”. During this seated section, the music echoes J.S. Bach’s Bist du Bei Mir (“Be Thou With Me”; original melody by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel), a piece that I learned through Gene and one that inspired me to ask him about beginning to compose music. Here too, an accordion (via electronics) rings in a continuous, infinite breath.
In the final coda of Seiend, the soloist stands once again to face the audience, reverently performing “Taps” within a swirling fanfare of electronically generated trumpets, a humble tribute to Mr. Eiden, whose ongoing performances with bands big and small as well as for parades, funerals, and other ceremonies remind us that music making is, at its best, a supreme act of human generosity.
Seiend’s meaning and linguistic participle are shared (in Greek) with Iannis Xanakis’s piece Eonta (brass ensemble and piano, 1963-4). There are several connections to that piece beyond the close instrumentation, including several extracted quotations that provide source materials for the music of Seiend.
View a video excerpt of the premiere can be seen here.
A score for Seiend is available for download, it is licensed under a “Creative Commons” license, see below.
Seiend for brass quintet and live electronics by Kevin Ernste is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
