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Tracings, completed in October 1981, is a five movement, twenty-two minute composition, scored for standard symphony orchestra.

The title refers to two specific compositional processes which occur within each movement and are transferred from movement to movement.  The principal melodic elements, when restated, are varied and quite often in a context of some kind of imitative form or technique.  The primary vertical aspects are various kinds of pedals and ostinati, also often in an imitative context.

In the first movement, over a timbrally modulated sonority, a short abrupt motive is stated by the woodwinds echoed immediately (celeste) and by a somewhat slower and extended restatement (percussion).  This kind of procedure occurs several times with the motive being extended with each appearance and gradually slowing into a longer and more expressive melody.

While similar processes of the first movement are employed, the second movement is dance-like with its basic character determined by shifting the agogic accents of an 8/8 meter.

A primary factor in the third movement is the evolution of the vertical element which begins on a low pedal point and gradually unfolds throughout the movement into a twelve-tone sonority that encompasses a five octave range.  Each pitch of this sonority is timbrally decorated.  Floating in and around this sonority, a chromatic and fragmentary melodic line is introduced by the flutes, colored by divisi violins.  The violins gradually from a cluster and restate the melody in augmentation.  The following section (flutes) is a variation of the opening.  The movement closes with a clarinet duo featuring an augmentation and interval transposition of the melody as the final pitches of the vertical sonority emerge and become stable.

The fourth movement is in A B A form, opening with a 'swarming' ostinato in the string punctuated by very low and percussive attacks.  The woodwinds interrupt with a fast melodic gesture that is a variation of the first motive in the opening movement.  The low, percussive attacks return and are interrupted by muted brass with the final gesture echoes by clarinets and flutes.  This duality occurs for a third time leading to another statement of the low, percussive attacks which now accompany the resolution of the string ostinato.  The 'B' section has a sustained character highlighted by a breathy and pulsive ostinato that oscillates between a minor 3rd interval.  Over this motion, the same interval (minor 3rd) is melodically used in what may be described as an echo canon.  A shortened 'A' section returns with the melodic and ostinato roles instrumentally reversed.

After a brief introduction, the final movement states simultaneously two contrasting ostinati: one (low register in canon, the other (upper register being a quasi-improvisational set of figures in woodwinds and strings.  In the middle of this texture, the brass and percussion play an extended, ascending statement.  The following major section features the woodwinds in an antiphonal canon over a slowly rising string texture of controlled glissandi.  The third major section, introduced by the percussion in a faster tempo, is a kind of criss-cross design: the string and upper woodwinds move from high to low registers through a series of expanding and contracting clusters while the brass move from low to high, also in similar cluster configurations.  This section leads to the coda which highlights each orchestral family with virtuosic passages, punctuated by the percussion battery. --Frederick Fox

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