Ikon II
for violin and chamber orchestra  

Ikon II (January 2009) for violin and chamber orchestra, like L'Icône St. Nicolas (December 2008) for violin, percussion and nine instruments, and the earlier Ikon (September 2008) for violin and piano are all musical representations of a 19th-century Russian house icon of St. Nicolas acquired by the composer in Tallinn, Estonia in June 2008.

Three elements are present in the iconic rendering: a triangle (created from the crosses of the stole), a square (book of the Gospels), and three circles (in which the figures of the saint, as well as Christ and Mary appear nimbated). The main motive is derived from three layers of pitch matrices, revealed specifically through a "window" created by the triangle. The 36x36 matrices are themselves based on collections of trichords (3x3).

Although popularized in western myth as Santa Claus, St. Nicolas was known for his generosity to children, justice for the oppressed, and the struggle to support the Doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea. Hence, the all-pervasive number 3.

All three works are formalized in three sections, and follow in general ways not only the scansion of the Lord's Prayer, in Russian, but the musical rendering of three ideas: the linear (the word), the vertical (space), and the connection between the two in the way a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church might sign the cross (top, down, right, left).

Performances