I wrote “To Historical Patterns” because I wanted to set a text by my grandfather, a retired professor of linguistics who wrote grammar textbooks. A few years ago, he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, and he has been slowing down since then.*

Due to the technical nature of the textbooks, I initially struggled to find a quote where my grandfather’s personal voice stood out. However, I started to see hints of his idiosyncrasies in a few tangents about Old English etymology. Those discoveries reminded me of the joy of seeing flashes of personality on days when he was otherwise quiet and withdrawn.

In line with this concert’s theme of deleting, I took a sentence and removed words from it to make as simple of a phrase as possible, using that as a recurring passacaglia. Each repetition, I reinserted a bit of text, until the whole sentence is perceptible at the end of the piece. When voices are silenced and deleted, we can still preserve them through our writing and in our memories.

*This program note was written in May 2025. Sadly, Mark Lester passed away on August 22, 2025. I’m grateful that he was a part of my life for so long.