Saturation and Purge is a two-movement structure played attacca. The first movement’s long arching melody leaves traces behind which create a harmonic fabric. The inspiraton for this strategy was the idea of a Veronica (the cloth imprinted with the image of Christ after St. Veronica wiped the sweat off of his face with it) — with each melodic step on the road to Calvary, the orchestra leaves harmonic imprints like the imprint on the cloth. After reaching a climactic maximum density at the end of the first movement, the second movement deconstructs the various layers of sound in several structural blocks. The two movements together from a relationship much like a paradigm and an analysis.

This piece was performed in a reading with the American Composers Orchestra on June 4, 1999, with Paul Dunkel conducting.

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