
" Limbic Fragments "
For Ensemble
2024 SELECTION
- Nominated for : The Young Audience Prize 2025
- Nominated for : The Musical Composition Prize 2024
"The limbic system is an immensely elegant and sophisticated network of interconnected brain structures that regulate certain features of human behavior, emotions, motivation, and arousal— as well as the formation and storage of memory.
I am intrigued by the notion that episodic memories, when connected to strong emotions, become eligible for long-term storage in the brain, while other less “important” memories tend to fall victim to routine neurological “housekeeping.”
I have come to believe that stored ideas are very much alive, and continue to evolve, independent of us, even while we are performing mundane tasks—or sleeping. This miracle is an essential part of the creative process: composers in particular must remember not only the sounds around them, but also their own incipient, evolving ideas—while creating a new piece.
Limbic Fragments seemed an apt title for a work that involves a series of energetic, yet largely inconclusive episodes, whose “loose ends,” I hope, serve to increase the momentum of the music from one section to the next—similar, perhaps, to the way memories sometimes come at us, cascading and tumbling over each other, fast and furious."
- Melinda Wagner