Nascence which essentially means "in the state of being born" was originally completed July 4,1976 and is dedicated to accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek. The fact that the piece was completed on the American Bicentennial is somewhat significant in that the composer was focusing on how we humans tend to perceive and observe significant dates and milestones. It seems that many of us tend to observe milestones as if we were putting time in a neat little box to mark the "end" of a period. Whereas in reality these date-based milestones are only notches in a continuum of time that is continually evolving or being "born"...in other words, the idea of always "beginning" a new period of time instead of "ending" the previous period of time.

Music, especially tonal music has a tendency to put time in neat little boxes as well with its use of chord structures that start from the tonic, move away from the tonic to chords of increasing tension, then back to the tonic again for resolution and rest. And if we humans do not hear that final resolution at the end of a piece, we tend to feel as though we are left without resolution and that we haven't been able to wrap up the piece or time in our metaphorical box. Therefore Nascence is an atonal piece but tries to use certain elements of tonality to explore what happens when tonality moves and evolves towards non-resolution and evolution. To accomplish this the composer uses very long sustained sounds building from single notes at first and evolving into a more atonal "mist" of cluster-type sounds. However, out of this dense coloristic fog emerge tonal milestones which in the traditional harmonic sense are chords that are always moving away from the original tonal center of A. This creates a musical atmosphere that adheres to the concept of continual evolution or birth.

Nascence was affectionately dedicated to Guy Klucevsek because he and the composer had met a few years earlier. There was an immediate connection between the two and the friendship, like Nascence, has continued to evolve over the years in spite of life's events evolving at their own pace. Guy premiered the work at a Relache Ensemble Concert Series in Philadelphia in 1976. The composer 's first performance of this work occurred at the Youngstown State University New Music Concert Series on October 27, 1982.

Nascence is about 6 minutes long and at this point is not in CODA's Finale format, but rather the composer's own manuscript. This work is expected to be converted to Finale in the very near future.