The Seashell's Center
for flute and piano

Work no. 202
2021

This is one of the satellite pieces of Many Pink Butterflies, derived from that work's Solo III. Each solo in MPB is about a minute long, and explores a single compositional technique. A satellite piece based on a solo develops that technique further. In this case, the technique was reiteration of a short motif: obvious at first, but gradually buried under more and more notes. Practically nothing from the original solo survived in The Seashell's Center, although the new work's textures are still based on the original ones. The repeated motif is different, too. The title is a reference to the seventh season Adventure Time episode called The Hall of Egress.

I wanted to give this piece a joyful mood, and a climactic ending. It seemed to work best for the bits of music I had sketched when I just started; I thought it would be good to end on a positive note, too, because this was the last MPB satellite (all of the other solos have been covered by this point), and many of the others seemed to be melancholic rather than celebratory. While I was working, I noticed a passage reminiscent of music from my Honfleur Colors series of piano pieces, so I copied it and developed it separately into Honfleur rose – an alternate (or secret) ending for the MPB series of pieces.