Michael Boyman

Anger Management

Anger Management is a study in aggression and heartbreak; rejecting Tennyson's maxim 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' My goal was to combine the narrative of romantic loss - with its elements of anger; nostalgia; despair and ultimately defiance - with a strict compositional technique and economy of material. The piece is based on two motives: the gruff; ascending three notes of the first bar and a descending half-step sigh; which is eventually transformed and intensified into an ascending major seventh. --Michael Boyman