The Evening Redness in the West - Ben Rieke

Recorded by the IU Concert Orchestra at the New Voices Competition winner's concert, Jacobs School of Music MAC, Nov. 14 2021
Violin soloist - Yeajin Kim
The title of this piece is the subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood
Meridian. Described as an "anti-western", the book follows the unnamed
"kid" as he joins a band of sadistic bounty hunters on a bloody rampage
through early 19th century Mexico. I have long been fascinated with Blood
Meridian with its startling juxtaposition of horrifically violent imagery and
beautiful prose, as well its inscrutability; events occur in a total vacuum of
context while still being colored with an elusive gravity by the simple yet
bizarre language in which they are described. I am always left with more
questions than answers when I put it down.
The most important impression that the novel has left with me is the
quality of violence that it presents. In the world of Blood Meridian, it takes
on the role of a god; venerated, omnipresent, existing outside of time. I
think its greatest quality is its ability to contextualize the role of violence in
our own time. We are left with the impression that our relationship to
brutality and war is too intimate to ever change, but how can this be true
in the civilized first world of the 21st century? Violence now might not be a
part of my everyday life, but it thrives now more than ever in other forms-
commodified, exported, transmuted. Our scalps are harvested secondhand.
The Evening Redness in the West takes its structure from the novel itself.
New tempo markings are analogues for chapters, themselves broken into
different sections as in Blood Meridian. This is done not necessarily to
preserve discrete images (though some remain), but to present a
continuously evolving characterization of violence. The lingering concept of
the "anti-western" brought to mind certain characteristics of "American"
music (Copland, Gershwin, etc.) that are occasionally twisted and applied
to this end.

[@jonathanlauff2790]

Congratulations, Ben! Such a powerful creation, and well performed! Keep up the great work!