Background, description, and analysis of the ballet

Abstract

The ballet Quanah is a four-movement work based on the life of Quanah Parker, the last Comanche Chief. The synopses of the first and last movements portray the minutes preceding his death, while the synopses of the second and third movements are his flashbacks to two key events in his life: his role in the attack on the white buffalo-hunters at the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874, and his part in the surrender of his tribe to the U.S. military in 1875.

To eliminate my subconscious dependence on three habitual cognitive paradigms, I divided my compositional process into two distinct parts: decisions affecting large-scale boundaries and general content, and the use of chance procedures to determine small-scale relationships and specific values. Applying these new processes, I translated my original conception of the music accurately. The continual amalgamation of stasis and continuous change in the music reflects my desired ethic.