Daniel P. Lutz
Concord Band Commission (1997)
Dichotomy…Impressions of Kerouac is a work for winds and percussion
inspired by impressions of the American writer and poet, Jack Kerouac.
The piece was commissioned by the Concord Band in 1997 to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the writing of the novel On The
Road, considered the defining work of the Beat Generation, as well as
the 75th anniversary of Kerouac’s birth. Dichotomy is intended to be a
non-verbal, musical interpretation of a man who inspired a generation.
The idea of a “dichotomy,” or the two sides of the man, was spurred by
the apparent co-existence of the radical and the traditional in Kerouac’s
writings and life, from the extraordinarily structured environment and
mores of immigrant French-Canadian Catholic beginnings to the almost
surreal rebellious wanderings and amoral experimentation of the Beat
Generation. Incorporated in this musical interpretation are elements of
chance music or free improvisation within a highly structured musical
form; the use of traditional/highly consonant folk melodies juxtaposed
amongst dissonant experimental musical ideas … all revealing contrasting
moods and emotions much like the composer’s overriding impression
of the man who once described himself as a “strange solitary crazy
Catholic mystic,” Jack Kerouac. (Source: Daniel P. Lutz)
