---
title: Capriccioso
slug: capriccioso
instrumentation: For recorder, violin, and harp.
premiere: March 10, 2022. (Online)
score: https://jessebrault.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/scores/capriccioso.pdf
recordings:
  Premiere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfhT8TU4Ik
  Audio: https://jessebrault.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/recordings/capriccioso.mp3
description: Commissioned by Musaics of the Bay, Capriccioso is a musical response to Carel Fabritius' 1654 painting The Goldfinch.
shortInfo: 'Commissioned by <em>Musaics of the Bay</em> and <em>Miniatures: Mauritshuis</em>.'
date: 2021-11-01
categories:
  - Chamber
---
Capriccioso is a musical response to Carel Fabritius' 1654 painting _The Goldfinch_, 
as well as the history surrounding the painting itself.

Generally, the music is meant to evoke the playfulness of the small bird in the painting. 
It is a stylish but silly bird: complicated, sparkling harmonies appear from the very 
beginning of the music, and short, pointy melodic ideas abound as I imagined 
the bird hopping around its home.

However, as the work evolved, I had two competing yet somehow related ideas in my mind: 
the first of the painter’s tragic death in the gunpowder explosion in Delft the same 
year the painting was completed, and the second of the bird losing its chain and flying 
away in escape. This brought about music with a mysterious, foreboding character, and in 
the end music for the bird miraculously taking off in flight.