Complete Works

Here is a complete list of music I’ve written,

including school assignments and experimental works.

2021

A Dream Within a Dream

For SATB choir

Text by Edgar Allen Poe. Written for the EAMA Summer Music Institute 2021. Reading by members of Variant Six.

Listen Score

2020

Where Have We Arrived?

For SATB Choir

The increasing rapidity of modernism in the 20th Century has left us with severe problems we need to contend with. The planes, automobiles and factories we so quickly developed and utilized have left us with a climate in crisis. Similarly, the serialist techniques and experimental approaches of 20th Century music have created a formidable gap between the popular and classical styles. We have created so much with our ingenuity and drive towards the future, but what have we lost? Where has our drive led us?

Score

David Kahn · Where Have We Arrived

Sonata

For Flute and Piano

Score

David Kahn · Flute Sonata

2019

BAP GET

Album, 10 tracks. First excursions into electronic music.

2018

ROMPECABEZAS

For voice, keyboard, and electronics.

Rompecabezas is the Spanish word for “puzzle,” and its literal translation is “break head”. I have always been enamored with this word’s aesthetic qualities - its inherent rhythms and melodies. After deciding to write a piece celebrating the sonic intricacies of this word, I looked into the meanings and found more possibilities for artistic narratives. Not only does rompecabezas mean puzzle, such as a jigsaw or a Rubik’s cube, but it also implies a danger: these puzzles, normally a form of amusement, can break one’s head, much like what happens to the protagonist of Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi. I realized that inherent in this word was an Icarus fable of sorts, a warning against overambition and overthinking. I have also been inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s perception of Tarot numerology, in which the 1-10 of swords depict an intellectual journey from ultimate potential to ultimate maturity.

This piece is structured by the word itself, where each syllable is a movement and each letter a subsection. The first movement Rom represents an initial curiosity and wonder, as well as the birth of the voice. The second movement Pe depicts the first encounters with the word, as well as some melodic elaborations. Ca establishes new rules, applying the syllables of Rompecabezas to a pentatonic scale in a solfege-like fashion. The fourth movement Be depicts an unscrambling of the word as well as the ultimate ambition and climax of the piece. Zas, the last movement, represents a crisis and an eventual acceptance, resulting in intellectual maturity and wisdom, not unlike the initial wonder.

Compositionally, this is my largest and most complex work, as it includes aleatoric and algorithmic processes as well as sections of improvisation.

Foggy Hog

Sound design for the 1975 Soviet animated film Hedgehog in the Fog.

2017

ARMOFF

A transcendent experience in the style of a Youtube Poop Music Video (YTPMV). Clips and audio from the 2012 film Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, music and editing by me. (warning: adult language)

Frozn Kidz

Orchestral score for a segment of the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen.

Score

Climbing

A ritual for any number of performers. This piece, written in the style of a Fluxus event, was meant to be performed at the 100 Years, 100 Stones sculpture on the campus of San Diego State University, but it can be performed wherever the presence of mountains can be felt.

Score