Juvenoia

Listen to the work here!
 
Juvenoia is a short work for solo marimba, in the style of a single-reprise Baroque allemande in D minor. The allemande is a Baroque dance style which is in a slow to moderate tempo in common time, and emphasizes phrases of two and four measures, and pickup figures of one of three sixteenth notes. The work has three four bar phrases written within the idioms and stylistic rules of Baroque counterpoint, and was originally composed as a project for an elective in Baroque Counterpoint at the University of North Texas, under the instruction of Dr. Diego Cubero. The word juvenoia refers to the psychological phenomenon of older generations of humans looking back on the cultural fixations of their youth as superior to the phenomena of current youth, as often expressed through grievances beginning with “Kids these days and their…”. In a video by the London based content creator Michael Stevens on the popular science YouTube channel VSauce, Stevens described this psychological phenomenon as a product of the way that humans’ aesthetic tastes (in music art, etc.) becomes somewhat cemented as they first develop their sense of identity, some time during their adolescence. I thought this would be a humorous and ironically fitting title for a Baroque allemande written in 2022.