UC San Diego

This thesis is a compilation of program notes that I wrote for my Master's Recital. The writings document different aspects of my learning process with these pieces as well as my thoughts about what they have come to mean to me after having performed them. The pieces included are Peter Ablinger's Weiss/Weisslich 31e, Salvatore Sciarrino's Il Legno e la Parola, Brian Ferneyhough's Bone Alphabet, Georges Aperghis' Le Corps à Corps and Lewis Nielson's Iskra. Objectively, the pieces share little in terms of surface texture. However, for me, they became intrinsically linked with one another simply because of all of the enormous technical, interpretational, philosophical and even emotional challenges they posed through my working process. In short, the pieces were so problematic to learn that the primary question became "why should I perform this?" The following is my attempt to answer this question in a subjective way, describing how the act of working on and living with these pieces ultimately enriched my life. I found that these pieces taught me an enormous amount about myself as an interpreter, percussionist and human being, and I hope that these writings provide some insight as to why that was.