Symmetrical Designs No. 2 comprises four designs (one per movement) made of musical events. Each event in each design is part of an eight-member family determined by symmetrically permuting and inverting four parameters characterizing the event. In all movements, time of the event’s occurrence is one of the parameters. In movements I and IV, the events are notes and the other parameters are pitch, dynamic, and technique (arco, pizzicato, etc). In movements II and III, the events are measures and the other parameters are pitch-class set, instruments active, and minimum duration.

The movement titles are phrases from literature: Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road”, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci libretto, Epicurus’s four-part cure, and a sonnet by G.M. Hopkins. This work is dedicated to my beloved friend Leon Lorenzo Leeds.