Things Passed – Aleksander Nowak

For Guitar, standard notation, commissioned by the XII *Silesian Guitar Autumn* Festival in Tychy (Poland) 2008, was written in Louisville during the last few months of the year 2007. The basic idea for the composer was to create a kind of musical collection of chaotic bits of memories, from which the performer, as well as the listener, would pick out smaller or bigger fragments and focus on them, treating the other secondarily, as it often happens while recalling memories of things that are passed (therefore the title). The piece, intended as a part of the guitar competition, is also an attempt to generate the material challenging for the performer, without using the sound idiom, which is characteristic for this specific and difficult instrument. Things Passed consists of three parts, of which the first primarily uses the sonoristic events, the second focuses on the rhythm and harmony, and the last summes up and unites the previous parts.