Book of Spells is a six-movement brass quintet inspired by historical grimoires and books of magic. My interest in these texts emerged during the darkest period of the pandemic, when the idea of reaching toward forgotten systems of ritual, protection, and transformation carried a particular resonance.

The piece draws on the syllables, phonemes, symbols, and verbal formulas found in sources including Francis Barrett’s The Magus, the anonymously published Black Pullet and The Lesser Key of Solomon, and the Icelandic Galdrabók. Each movement takes its title and point of departure from a different kind of spell: I. Invocation–, II. Prosperity, III. Protection, IV. Healing, V. Hex, and VI. Counterspell (after Caresana). Rather than attempting to depict these rituals literally, I use their language and structures as musical material, allowing their rhythms, repetitions, and patterns to shape the larger form of the work.

The six movements are conceived as a continuous trajectory, moving through acts of summoning, desire, defense, restoration, and destruction before arriving at the possibility of reversal. Beneath that arc lies a more personal one. I wrote Book of Spells during and after my father’s final struggle with progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative neurological disease, and the work is dedicated to his memory.

The final movement, Counterspell, incorporates music from a seventeenth-century lullaby by the Neapolitan composer Cristofaro Caresana, from his collection La Veglia. Its appearance transforms the idea of the counterspell into something more intimate: an attempt not to undo what has happened, but to answer loss with memory.

Book of Spells was written for the Atlantic Brass Quintet in 2023. Their artistry and collaborative spirit shaped the work throughout its creation and helped it become something I could not have arrived at alone.

—SC