View Scores
Excerpts from scores of selected works are available below as PDF files. Full program notes, and information regarding performance details for all works available upon request. Complete scores can be purchased by contacting Kurt Rohde directly.
| Fratturato Teatro for four musicians and puppet theater is a twenty-six minute work for cello, clarinet/bass clarinet, piano and percussion that I composed in 2008-2009 while at the American Academy in Rome. The work is in two large parts, and is a retelling of the tale of Romulus and Remus by Livy. It is the largest collaborative work I have worked on, since it not only dealt with composing the music, but creating a workable version of the story, working with designers for the puppets, the set and the lighting, working with the builders of the puppets and sets, participating in the direction and choreography, and overseeing the entire rehearsal process. The American Academy in Rome was the perfect environment for this project, since during my residency the residents were not only extremely talented and innovative, but incredibly easy to work with individually and as a group. |  Fratturato Teatro for four musicians and puppet theater60 KB PDF |
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| ONE for speaking pianist on texts of Paul Mann was composed in 2009 in Rome and San Francisco for one of my dearest and oldest friends, pianist Genevieve Lee. Using selected texts by poet Paul Mann (Genevieve’s husband), I strove to composed a work that amplified Mann’s revelatory and gripping poetry. While there is no particular narrative to the my work, I did arrange the poems into an order that reflects the journey of a story – a point of departure (something from nothing), a middle (crisis), an arrival (realization). The piece requires light amplification and reverb for both the piano and the speaking voice, is in three parts, and lasts twenty-three minutes. The title of the work comes from the opening of the first poem:
One grain of sand on my tongue. |
 ONE for speaking pianist on texts of Paul Mann60 KB PDF |
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| Concertino for Violin and Small Ensemble was composed for my good friend violinist Axel Strauss, who patiently waited five years for me to compose a work for him. My Concertino was premiered by Strauss and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Composed in Rome and San Francisco over the course of 2009 and 2010, the work is in three movements: Moto (motion), Sotto (under) and Rotto (broken). The work was composed with the intention of focussing on specific qualities in Axel Strauss’ playing that I find to be particularly compelling: his unwavering ability to be aware of what is going on in the music around him at any given moment, his exceptionally beautiful sound in the violin’s lowest and highest registers, and his rocking sense of rhythm and pulse. The work is seventeen minutes long. |  Concertino for Violin and Small Ensemble60 KB PDF |
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| still distant, still here is a twelve minute work for large ensemble that was composed for Southwest Chamber Music as part of their 2010 Ascending Dragon Project. Ascending Dragon was an ambitious cultural exchange project sponsored by the US State Department and the Vietnam Ministry of Culture. It involved musicians from both countries collaborating in the production of nearly five weeks of concerts in Hanoi, Saigon and Los Angeles, which featured new music from the US and Vietnam. The title of the work comes from the final line of a poem by Paul Mann:
Zakhor, recall from chains of sheker Bring us to remember year to You still distant, still here |
 still distant, still here48 KB PDF |
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| All Thumbs is a five minute etude for mixed ensemble, composed in the Fall 2008 in Rome for the Scharoun Ensemble. It uses music from an earlier work of mine, Two Left Hands, an etude for piano solo. My solo piano etude proved to be utterly unplayable, which inadvertently seemed to have become a feature of a lot of the music that I composed around that time. Nonetheless, I was very connected with much of the music from this piano etude, and felt that if it was worth trying to recycle it in a different guise. Hence, an etude for mixed ensemble. |  All Thumbs450 KB PDF |
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| Bis Bald is a five minute fanfare for large orchestra. The work was composed during the Summer 2008. It was commissioned by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra as a parting gift to conductor Kent Nagano, who was leaving his post as their conductor after 25 years. It is dedicated to Maestro Nagano, a fine, imaginative musician, one that has been tremendously supportive and encouraging towards me and my work since I began to compose again in the mid-1990s. The title directly translates from German as “until soon”. However, the overtone of warmth and looking forward until the next time one meets is lost in the translation; the English “see you later” falls flat by comparison. |  Bis Bald 120 KB PDF |
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| Endless is a ten minute work in six short movements for the exceptional San Francisco based chorus, Volti, and their director, Robert Geary. While searching for texts to set for this particular piece, I was often confronted with prose that was too lengthy, seemed inherently unsingable, or conformed in a narrative form that was too “linear”, and ultimately not intriguing to me. I wanted texts that were simple, yet layered, clear and mysterious. I decided on using five poems of Paul Mann, which are from a large, seven-volume set of poems entitled Endless. The work was composed in the Summer and Fall 2007, and appears on the Volti CD, Turn the Page. |  Endless 52 KB PDF |
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| F(o)UR is an incomplete four movement work for solo violin written for my dear friend, violinist Iris Stone. The original movements are Obsession Toccata, Lost Pavane, Hideous Waltz, and Night Vase (after McCormack). Only two of the movements survive: Obsession Toccata and Night Vase (after McCormack). The title is a pun: it refers to the works’ four movements, to the English preposition ‘for’, and to the German spelling of ‘für’, of the preposition, denoting the four pieces are specifically for someone (in this case, Iris), and for a specific purpose (also in this case, for a concert featuring solo violin works of Bach and Ysaye). The surviving movements are 10 minutes long, were composed during the Fall 2007 and Winter 2008, and subsequently revised in the Winter 2010 at my home in San Francisco. |  Obsession Toccata70 KB PDF |
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| Gravities is a twenty-two minute, three movement work (Undertow, Doubt and Danced) for string quartet that I composed while vacationing in the desert of southeastern Utah during the Summer, and at my home in San Francisco during the Fall 2007 and Winter 2008. It was commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet as part of their Call and Response project, and is dedicated to them with deep respect and admiration. |  Gravities 84 KB PDF |
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| White Boy/Man Invisible for solo viola and chamber orchestra, was composed for the American Composers Orchestra, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester – Berlin. It is dedicated to violists Madeline Prager and Igor Budenstein, and conductors Kent Nagano, Dennis Russell Davies and Benjamin Simon. The work is scored for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), bassoon, two horns, percussion, and a small string section (3, 3, 3, 2), and last about 17 minutes. |  White Boy/Man Invisible80 KB PDF |
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| Seeing Things is a spiral form, a physical shape that I used as a musical form for the piece. The spiral moves outward, collapses inward, gives way to new spirals, is elliptical or symmetrical, and moves at different rates inside of these variables. Seeing Things is a ten minute work for violin and piano. It was composed at my home in San Francisco in the Summer 2006. It is dedicated to and written for violinist Iris Stone, with great affection and admiration. | 
Seeing Things |
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| Aunti Mazurka is a three minute etude for solo piano. It was composed for and is dedicated to pianist and composer Larry Axelrod. This is the second etude for solo piano in an ongoing set of etudes composed for different pianists. This work focuses on a couple features of the mazurka, most notably the stressed third beat and skipping quality of the mazurka melody. As in most of my works, these features are somewhat ‘torn down’ and reassembled according to my tastes. | 
Auntie Mazurka |
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| The joy of Amanda Moody’s libretto to Bitter Harvest is its clarity of intention. While the story incorporates numerous changes between past, present, and future, often immediately without any warning or transition, the form of the story has a distinctly organic flow. The music was composed between 2002 and 2005, at my home in San Francisco, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and at the American Academy in Berlin. Lasting nearly 70 minutes, Bitter Harvest is scored for a chamber orchestra, solo soprano (Miss White), tenor (Ruby Black), baritone (Agent Orange), and a chamber chorus. |  Bitter Harvest73 KB PDF |
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| It is with a sly nod towards the ironic that I composed Plain and Simple, a set of six virtuoso variations for string quintet, during the 2005 Winter months in San Francisco. Over the past couple of years, I have come to gradually accept that my music is the product of an overly active mind. Recently, I completed a 75 minute oratorio, and it was an attractive proposal to compose something as straightforward as a set of theme and variations. But as with most of my intentions at the beginning of a new work, the piece I end up with is always entirely unexpected. | 
Plain and Simple |
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| Two Left Hands is a three minute etude for solo piano. It was composed for and is dedicated to pianist Amy Dissanayake. Having never written an etude for solo piano, and not being to play piano myself, my challenge in composing an etude was to find a suitable technical “issue” to focus on thatwould be appropriate for the player to address, as well being suitably interesting to explore as the composer of a work that I could not ever play myself. | 
Two Left Hands |
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| Under The Influence is a six minute work for bass clarinet and strings written for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Composed during the Winter 2002-2003 in San Francisco and Berlin, my quintet is active and rugged at one moment, floating and distant at another. The opening bass clarinet line is a fragmented, stilted tune, sort of a wild jazz riff. The music surrounding it is nothing more than an elaborate doubling of this freaked-out “melody”. What results is an intricate counterpoint, tense but interlocking, suddenly giving way to high, distant harmonics overtones. |  Under The Influence 165 KB PDF |
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| Double Trouble is a chamber concerto for two violas and small ensemble, lasting fifteen minutes. The work is as much a virtuoso show piece for the ensemble as it is for the soloists. It was commissioned for The Empyrean Ensemble’s 2002-2003 season, and premiered in December 2002. Ellen Ruth Rose and Kurt Rohde were the soloists, and David Milnes conducted. The work is in three movements; Obsessive Compulsive, Double and Spazoid. |  Obsessive Compulsive 137 KB PDF |
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| Equinox was composed for violist Susan Gulkis Assadi in the Spring 2002. It was premiered in Seattle at the Viola Congress in June 2002. A single movement, five minute work, Equinox explores the contrasting nature of two different types of music (one lyrical and one rhythmic), and how when transformed and combined, they enter a new music world altogether. | 
Equinox 89 KB PDF |
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| Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Sun King were commissioned by The New Century Chamber Orchestra as part of their Beatles Abbey Road Project. Each piece is a realization for string orchestra of the original Beatles songs, and each movement lasts three minutes. They were premiered by The New Century Chamber Orchestra in March 2002. | 
116 KB PDF
98 KB PDF |
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| Commissioned by conductor Lawrence Kohl and The Pacific Chamber Symphony for their 2002 season, Strong Motion is a single movement, ten minute work for chamber orchestra. The music in this work is rhythmic and propulsive, and focuses on the lurching, convulsive momentum set in motion at the work’s beginning. |  Strong Motion
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| Composed in the winter 1999-2000, Three Fantasy Pieces for Viola, Cello and Double Bass was written for double bassist Michel Taddei. It was premiered by The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in January 2000. This ten minute work is in three movements; Abrupt! Fragments, Solstice, and Rush. It may well be one of only a a handful of works written for this combination. |  Abrupt! Fragments 107 KB PDF |
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| Play Things is the first movement of as as yet unfinished work for cello and piano. Lasting only three minutes, this frantic, frolicking romp is humorous and lighthearted. My intention is that each movement of the piece would be composed for a different cellist friend of mine. This movement was composed for cellist Noriko Kishi, and was premiered by cellist Leighton Fong and pianist Aglika Angelove in April 2002. | 
114 KB PDF |
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| Five Pieces for Orchestra was composed in 2000-2001 at my home in San Francisco for conductor Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and was premiered in June 2001. Beginning with a relatively simple and direct opening movement, the piece evolves towards more involved and intricate movements towards the end, creating a progression of intensity throughout the course of the work. The entire work last fifteen minutes. | 
Five Pieces for Orchestra: Piece I 136 KB PDF |
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| Six Character Pieces for Viola and Piano was composed in the Summer 2000 for violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, and premiered at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in December 2000. The movements of this sixteen minute work are: Portrait, Microlude, Solitude, Figment, Fragments, and Threshold. | 
Portrait 134 KB PDF |
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| Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra was commissioned by conductor Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and was premiered in September 1998. Written for violinist Stuart Canin and violist Linda Ghidossi DeLuca, the piece uses both instruments in a variety of ways: as individual voices, and a combined, single instrument, and as part of the orchestral texture. This twenty minute work is in three movements; Rising, Flourishes, Hush. | 
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| Music for String Quartet was composed in the Spring 1997 for the Floristan String Quartet as part of a residency at the Deer Valley Intitue in Utah. It won first prize in the 1998 Lydian String Quartet Composition Contest. The final version of the work was premiered by The Lydian String Quartet in June 1999. Lasting fourteen minutes, it is in four movements; Arabesques, Rememberance, Floristan, and Linger. | 
Arabesques 92 KB PDF |
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| Oculus for String Orchestra was commissioned by The New Century Chamber Orchestra, and is dedicated to Paul Gambs. It was composed in the Summer 1996, at the MacDowell Colony, is scored for 15 individual string players, has eight movements, lasting a total of twenty six minutes. The piece builds on a single idea heard at the beginning of the work. Each subsequent movement takes this material and looks at it from a new perspective. As the piece progresses, there are subsequent connections not only to the opening, but to previous movements as well. The titles of the movements are; Epigram, Echoes, Litanies, Chorale, Stretto, Cenotaph, Strata, and Epigram (Final). This piece was my first large work for a large ensemble. | 
Epigram 145 KB PDF |
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| SLAM! was written for bass clarinetist Laura Carmichael. This five minute work maintains a relentless forward drive. It highlights the extreme register changes that are possible on the instrument, combined with a jazz like rhythmic intensity. | 
SLAM! 112 KB PDF |
