Turfan Fragments

A series of archaeological expeditions to East Turkestan, conducted by Sir Aurel Stein in the early part of this century, unearthed several fragments of knotted carpets dating from the third and sixth centuries. Though these fragments were too small to indicate either its design or provenance, they did convey a long tradition of carpet weaving. This is to a large degree the extended metaphor of my composition: not the suggestion of an actual completed work of “art”, but the history in Western music of putting sounds and instruments together.