As a composer deeply interested in literature, I've always loved novels featuring characters who are composers. After all, musicians have been a part of stories since at least as far back as the myth of Orpheus. In Ghostwritten Variations, each of the variations is written as though it was composed by one of those fictional composers. The composers represented in this piece are Adrian Leverkühn from Thomas Mann's epic novel Doctor Faustus; Robert Frobisher from David Mitchell's kaleidoscopic, post-modern masterpiece, Cloud Atlas; Peter Els from Richard Powers’s deeply moving Orfeo and Johannes Wright and the Orchestra from Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel The Memory of Whiteness, which takes place in the year 3229. Each variation takes as its clue descriptions of the composers’ music as they appear in the novels. The “theme” is first heard in the violin and consists of an expansive and chromatic melody. Its presence is felt subtly in each variation, as though to imply that these were all written by the same composer across many centuries. This theme of renewal and the return of the same characters in subsequent stories is central to the narrative of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and helps unify the music of the Ghostwritten Variations.

• Adrian Leverkühn (from Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus): "A swelling cantilena that numbs the mind"

• Robert Frobisher (from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas): “A rumbling cello lit by explosive triplets. Silence punctuated by breakneck mousetraps."

• Peter Els (from Richard Powers’s Orfeo): “A vast prolation canon—copies of a single germ, sped up or slowed down, pitched at various intervals. The tangle of lines gives way to pulsing chords."

• Johannes Wright and the Orchestra (from Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Memory of Whiteness): “Music leads the mind thorugh starry night.”