Posted January 6, 2025
Sky Above Clouds
Elena Ruehr
(b. 1963)
Sky Above Clouds is based on one of a series of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings by that title. Among O’Keeffe’s most abstract works, the Sky Above Clouds series are grid paintings of massive scope, dating from the early 1960’s. Sky Above Clouds IV (1965) directly inspired Ruehr’s orchestral work and is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ruehr was awed by the scope and impact attained in this remarkably minimalist painting, which gives the impression of a consistent pattern without resorting to genuine repetition of the shapes. Ruehr underlies her 1993 orchestral work with a mutable ostinato which runs throughout the piece, providing a flexible grid analogous to O’Keeffe’s. Over this eighth-note pulse, sustained melodies (motivically related to the ostinato) expand, contract and sustain in several layers at once. Said to have been inspired by O’Keeffe’s first airplane flight, the musical work has a sweeping scope that the composer describes as a representation of the “feeling of flying.” It is dedicated to Ruehr’s husband Seward Rutkove.