"God of Doors" for horn and piano
by Ben Dawson
Performed by Roger Kaza, French horn and Peter Henderson, piano
Program notes:
Janus is the two-headed Roman God of both Past and Future. He is also the God of beginnings, transitions, gates, doorways, time and endings. His influence was quite far-reaching as people called to him liberally: being the god of beginnings and endings, he was invoked for birthdays and funerals, as well as at the crown of a new year. To me, this shows a god more intimate than the other Olympians. Janus is present when born, when you get a new job, on your birthday, when you die; this is a god that, through intimacy and the finite breath of mortals, gets a taste of humanity. I can't imagine all of this time spent near humans and their culture doesn't color him empathetic and, being the God of past and present, he guides us into and out of life. He grieves the death of a life well-lived whilst looking into the eyes of a newborn child. He sees the beginning of a war at the end of another. But no hope exists without a taste of despair. No good thing comes into being without its foil. Yet the opposite is also true. Janus sees the bloom of spring in the heart of winter, the birth of a new civilization at the fall of another . . .
"God of Doors" is a piece describing the intense array of emotion I felt during the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid aside, I was truly saddened by the loss of my final year of undergraduate studies with my friends, colleagues, professors and a lover, some of whom I may never see again, in a city I may never return to. This wealth of regret and heartache was met with an increasing passion towards my craft, as well as excitement and awe for the things I might do with a degree and the freedom to use it. I was grieving many "endings'' while ecstatic about what beginnings the future may hold. Having trouble containing these thoughts and feelings, I wrote this piece to help me through them: a Lament for the Past and an Ode to the Future. Between them, the Eye of the Storm: Salvation.
About the composer:
A recent graduate of the University of Missouri, Ben Dawson is an American composer and performer based in Atlanta, GA with a love for folk, jazz fusion and programmatic music. As an avid player of all genres and types of video games, Dawson credits video game soundtracks as one of the driving forces behind his love of the art and would like to go on to score music for games, musicals and other interactive media.
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