spec is a shortened form of [fumeuse] speculacion, or a “[smoky] speculation,” taken from a line of text as used in the rondeau Fumeux fume par fumée by Solage, one of the representative ars subtilior composers of the Ars Nova period in late fourteenth-century France. “A smoker smokes”: thus begins the iconic three-part piece, with all voices singing low notes—something quite unusual in the music of the time. Because this work predates the introduction of tobacco to North America, scholars debate whether the smoker was smoking hashish, some other drug from the Silk Road, or whether the “smoke” is purely a metaphor signifying the nature of Solage’s work. Whatever the smoker was smoking, I was more interested in speculating on the concealed intent and desire that drove them to smoke. Perhaps it was merely recreational, yet I cannot help but think of a desire to escape daily life, which must have been unimaginably difficult, marked by wars, plagues, and death—imagery that is at once unimaginable and yet uncannily familiar today.

At the same time, the text to the ballade Le greygnour bien by Matteo da Perugia strikes me as relevant as ever: “The greatest good that nature / has given to us in this mad world / was the gift of sense and measurement, / through which we could acquire eloquence.” The salient techniques of compositions from the ars subtilior period point precisely to this way of thinking about rhythm—or time—in a mathematically rigorous manner. While I am by no means the first composer to be inspired by these techniques, I am nonetheless drawn to them, especially now, when modernism and its aspects—some of which include, but are not limited to, rigorous calculation and intense speculation of sound, virtues inherited from my teachers and predecessors—are increasingly pushed aside in favor of what American literary scholar Anna Kornbluh refers to as immediacy, the styles and aesthetics that depreciate mediation. My music is perhaps, then, a Denkmal for that which may soon be shrouded in obscurity.

This work is a free analysis and fantasy on Solage’s Fumeux fume par fumée and Matteo da Perugia’s Le greygnour bien. It employs techniques hinted at in these works, including proportional subdivisions of temporality as well as metric dissonances caused by the displacement of rhythmic figures. The three bass clarinet parts are written in a prescriptive notation that serves both as an acknowledgment and a tribute to composers of the Second Modernity movement, and as a way of phenomenologically interrogating sound reproduction—which, in turn, becomes an existential interrogation of the musicians themselves—all through speculating on voices from some 600 years ago.

spec: hommage à Solage et à Matteo da Perugia was written between the summer of 2025 and early 2026, in part with the generous support of Künstler*dorf Schöppingen, Germany. I am indebted to Christopher Nichols and Joanna McCoskey Wiltshire for their enthusiasm, with whom I will premiere the piece on April 26, 2026.