Delmonico's Building

Any attempt to write a piece based on a work of visual art, poetry, or other external medium is ultimately an attempt to abstract that artwork into musical form. This said, an interesting dillema occurs when that referenced work is itself a reference of another work, particularly a work from a third distinct artistic medium.

Charles Sheeler portrays a new highrise in Manhattan that took the place of an iconic local meet-up spot called Delmonico's, after it was demolished in the mid-1920s. The building, designed by H. Craig Severance, was in the style of an Italian Renaissance revival style, and was criticized for its odd proportions and lack of symmetry. And while Sheeler accomplishes this exact thing in his representation, his sketches most importantly lack detail. "Delmonico's Building" is merely a hollowed out abstraction of not only what the building was, but what Severance had originally conceived.

This piece, named after Sheeler's sketch, is an attempt to not only participate in this chain of artistic abstraction, but to accurately represent it so that the musical material is entirely self-aware of this abstraction.

Long story short, Delmonico's Building is a piece about de-ornamenting, removing detail, and the deconstruction of a subject several layers of abstraction behind.