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video 65 [2014] (image: dextro.org, sound: Arrell, dur. 5'15")
Music to Accompany Eve Heller’s Creme 21 [2014] (cello, live signal processing, 9')
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video 65 [2014] (image: dextro.org, sound: Arrell, dur. 5'15") Commissioned by the Alte Schmiede
Premiere: Nov. 28 (2014), Alte Schmiede (Vienna) March 19 (2015), Diagonale Film Festival (Graz, Austria) March 21 (2015), Diagonale Film Festival (encore screening) May 9 (2015) Echofluxx 15 (Paralelní Polis, Prague) July 26 (2015) Melbourne International Animation Festival (Australia) October 14-18 (2015) Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (LUFF), Switzerland November 20 (2015) EMM (Kansas City, USA)
download recommended for higher quality
Coding generates both sound and image in video 65, but this coding is complemented by the incorporation of physical movement into the creative process—track-pads, keystrokes, and hacked game controllers all engaged to add real-time spontaneity and human imprecision. The resulting choreography is both controlled and free, image and sound dancing an improvisation of shimmering bifurcations and whirling, luminous tones. Audio software used: Open Music, Spear, Max, Pro Tools
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24/7: Into the Direction of Light [2014] (image: Michael Aschauer[aka m.ash], sound: Arrell, dur. 9'30") Commissioned by the Alte Schmiede
Premiere: Nov. 28 (2014), Alte Schmiede (Vienna)
A static camera pointing at the seaside renders a slit-scan sequence of the very same point on the horizon for a full week (24 hours, 7 days). These images were recorded in November 2007 on Oros Harasson - a hill near Finikas on the Greek island Syros. Oros Harasson means: the mountain that inscribes the direction of light. The focus point of the camera followed this direction to the point where the sun sets down onto the horizon during winter solstice... --Michael Aschauer
My scoring mirrors Aschauer’s approach of gradual change. Simultaneous musical strands evolve independently toward a unified goal of rapid movement. Over this process, I overlay multiple recordings of a quotation from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. At first altered beyond recognition, the quotation slowly mutates into recognizable words, a journey that parallels the film's movement from the unknown to the known. --Chris Arrell
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Music to Accompany Eve Heller’s Creme 21 [2014] (cello, live signal processing, 9') Commissioned by the Alte Schmiede
Premiere: Nov. 28 (2014), Alte Schmiede (Vienna) March 12 (2015), College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA)
Perusal video available on request
Assembled from hundreds of clips taken from educational shorts and feature films, Heller’s Creme 21 raises fundamental questions about time, energy, gravity, and human perception. Taking a cue from Heller’s method, the soundtrack presents a collage assembled from permutations of Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite. Transformed by real-time electronic processing and accompanied by mutated samples also taken from the suite, the music performed by the cellist at first sounds nothing like the Bach, but the suite slowly reveal itself, transforming over the course of the soundtrack from hints and spectral winks to recognizable quotation.
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Argot [2000] (soprano, chamber orchestra, 8'30")
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Argot [2000] (soprano, chamber orchestra, 8'30") Text by e.e. cummings from 95 Poems Dedicated to Judith Kellock
Third Prize, Salvatore Martirano Award USA Division, International Society for Contemporary Music Composition Prize
Premiere by Arsenia Soto, soprano, the Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra, Mark Davis-Scatterday, conductor, 4 April 2000, Cornell University.
PERUSAL RECORDING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Argot is a setting of two poems by e. e. cummings in his shattered syntax style. At first glance the language of these poems might look like nonsense, but a little detective work reveals the intact first poem as feeble a blur of crumbling moon poor shadow eaten was of is and un of so hangs from the almost morning, and the intact second poem as note the old almost lady feebly hurling crumbs one by one at two three four five & six English sparrows.
The printed shattered syntax, the reconstructed text, and interpretation serve in tandem to give each poem a wonderfully rich and multilayered quality. In my settings, the soloist sings the shattered syntax exactly as it appears on the page. The pre—shattered start of the first poem, for example, feeble a blur of crumbling moon, sung in its shattered form as f...eeble...a blu...r of cr...umbl...ng m...oo...n. Word painting, on the other hand, such as a crumbling of the music’s density in the first movement and bird–like sounds in the third movement, portrays the second “pre–shattered” dimension. And, finally, the mood of the music reflects my, admittedly subjective, interpretation of each poem which both, to my mind, speak of death and renewal—the decaying moon replaced by the newborn sun, a woman in her autumn years surrounded by sparrows engaged in a lively feeding frenzy.
With special thanks to Judith Kellock, Steven Stucky, and Roberto Sierra.
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Cognitive Consonance [2004] (string orchestra, 9') Commissioned by Spivey Hall for the Spivey Hall Children’s Orchestra
Premiere by the Spivey Children’s Orchestra in spring of 2004
Cognitive Consonance is a quodlibet, the Renaissance equivalent of the modern medley or mashup, in rondo form (ABACABA). Nursery rhymes and children’s songs, playfully masked here, appearing there with wink, supply most of the material. The central section moves away from this model, the orchestra laying into a swaggering groove inspired by the heavy metal of my childhood and accompanied by layered Frère Jacques fragments in minor key. Reaching a terrible crescendo, angst subsides, the music settling back into lighthearted play.
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Personnages à longues oreilles hongroises (two pianos and string orchestra, 4', currently unavailable)
Commissioned by Cornell University
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This Life Glowed [2012] (saxophone quartet [ssaa], large wind ensemble, 11')
Entropy [2008] (large wind ensemble, currently unavailable)
Squash [2001] (large wind ensemble, withdrawn)
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This Life Glowed [2012] (saxophone quartet [ssaa], large wind ensemble, 11')
Premiere by the University of Puget Sound Wind Ensemble, Gerard Morris, conductor, 8 March 2014
Dedicated to composer Gérard Grisey and inspired by the acoustic properties of the solo instruments, This Life Glowed complements traditional lyricism with cutting-edge software developments in computer-assisted-orchestration to explore new sonic possibilities for the wind ensemble.
An introduction and coda serve to frame two large sections, the first and longest of these, which begins near the negative golden ratio and climaxes with the positive golden ratio, develops the material of the quartet from compact riffs of four notes to spiraling melodies spread over several octaves. Along the way, instruments of the ensemble begin to spin ghost-like echoes from the quartet, gradually accumulating their own material in the process. This material, in turn, forms the basis of the second large section, a dance of shifting pulses that triggers sympathetic vibrations as they resonate throughout the ensemble.
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Entropy [2008] (large wind ensemble, currently unavailable)
Premiere by the Georgia State Wind Ensemble, Robert Ambrose, conducting, 22 February 2008
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Three Psalms [2006] (satb, 5')
But come to me (satb, 4', currently unavailable)
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Three Psalms [2006] (satb, 5') Commissioned by the Clayton State Collegiate Chorale
Premiere by the Clayton State Collegiate Chorale, Shaun Amos, conducting, in April of 2006, Spivey Hall, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
The three psalms set here (43, 113, and 131) address a number of dualities—faith and doubt, love and fear, obedience and servitude, to name a few—but all speak to human frailty, a theme common to many ancient texts, from Biblical psalms to Greek legends and Medieval nursery rhymes. I take comfort in this theme, perhaps in knowing that my imperfections and inadequacies are part of what connects me to humanity.
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Stitch [2012] (12 players, 10'30") Written for Stuart Gerber and the Georgia State Percussion Ensemble
Premiere by the GSU Percussion Ensemble, Stuart Gerber, conducting, GSU, 3 April 2012
Two short rhythmic motives, the first consisting of three notes in short–long–hort relation and the second consisting of two notes of equal length, generate much of the musical material in Stitch. Mutated, restated, elongated, fractured, superimposed, elided and guillotined, the stitching together of these motives and their offspring serves as contextual glue. The multiple processes that determine these mutations are the Apollonian narrative of this piece, but Dionysus sings throughout, here disrupting a process, there leading the main players toward an amphetamine charged chorus. While most of Stitch features instruments of indefinite pitch, toward the end of the piece I introduce a short melodic phrase on the vibraphone—a tip of the hat to M. Varèse.
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Argot [2000] (soprano, chamber ensemble, 8'30")
Of Three Minds [2013] (soprano, piano, live signal processing, 17')
all fall down [2004, Re 08] (mezzo- or soprano, fl, cl, vln, vc, pno, 11')
Like Riot of Silver Lights [2010-11] (baritone, fl, cl, vln, vl, pno, perc, 13')
3 from 95 (soprano, piano, currently unavailable)
Reflections on Time (soprano, piano, withdrawn)
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Argot [2000] (soprano, chamber orchestra, 8'30") Text by e.e. cummings from 95 Poems Dedicated to Judith Kellock
Third Prize, Salvatore Martirano Award USA Division, International Society for Contemporary Music Composition Prize
Premiere by Arsenia Soto, soprano, the Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra, Mark Davis-Scatterday, conductor, 4 April 2000, Cornell University.
PERUSAL RECORDING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Argot is a setting of two poems by e. e. cummings in his shattered syntax style. At first glance the language of these poems might look like nonsense, but a little detective work reveals the intact first poem as feeble a blur of crumbling moon poor shadow eaten was of is and un of so hangs from the almost morning, and the intact second poem as note the old almost lady feebly hurling crumbs one by one at two three four five & six English sparrows.
The printed shattered syntax, the reconstructed text, and interpretation serve in tandem to give each poem a wonderfully rich and multilayered quality. In my settings, the soloist sings the shattered syntax exactly as it appears on the page. The pre—shattered start of the first poem, for example, feeble a blur of crumbling moon, sung in its shattered form as f...eeble...a blu...r of cr...umbl...ng m...oo...n. Word painting, on the other hand, such as a crumbling of the music’s density in the first movement and bird–like sounds in the third movement, portrays the second “pre–shattered” dimension. And, finally, the mood of the music reflects my, admittedly subjective, interpretation of each poem which both, to my mind, speak of death and renewal—the decaying moon replaced by the newborn sun, a woman in her autumn years surrounded by sparrows engaged in a lively feeding frenzy.
With special thanks to Judith Kellock, Steven Stucky, and Roberto Sierra.
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Of Three Minds [2013] (soprano, piano, live signal processing, 17') Texts from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens (PD) Written for Tony Arnold and Jacob Greenberg
Winner: 2014 Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award–Composer’s, Inc.
Premiere by Tony Arnold and Jacob Greenberg with Chris Arrell (processing), Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA, 2 April 2013.
Of Three Minds is a setting of five sections from Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). Inspired by Japanese haiku, each of the poem’s thirteen sections presents the image of a blackbird as the focal point for a concise study in vivid landscape and nuanced inflection. Scored for soprano, piano, and electronics, Of Three Minds enhances the traditional voice and piano duo with real–time computer–generated signal processing (distortion, echo, simulated Doppler effects, feedback) and prerecorded synthetic sounds modeled after spectral permutations of the sung voice. At times dominating the foreground and at other times adding subtle coloration, the electronics, like Stevens’ winged cynosure, serve to distinguish each song while unifying the cycle.
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all fall down [2004, Re 08] (mezzo- or soprano, fl, cl, vln, vc, pno, 11') (nine nursery rhymes in five movements) Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation of Harvard University
First Prize: 2013 Cape Fear New Music Festival International Call for Scores
Premiere by Jennifer Cobb and the Ensemble Sospeso, Joshua Colby, conducting, at Studio Seven, New York, New York on May 15, 2005.
COMPLETE PERUSAL RECORDING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
all fall down (2004 & 2008) is a setting of nine nursery rhymes in five movements arranged symmetrically around a scherzo–like middle movement. The rhymes, pithy and profound, address war, class, and politics, and range from When Adam Delved (dated the English Peasant Revolt of 1381) to Louis Carroll’s “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” from Through the Looking Glass (1872). Some rhymes are opaque, others transparent, but all rhymes comment on the human condition as accurately today as when they were first spoken. Throughout all fall down the vocalist acts as the equally sympathetic and sadistic court jester. She pokes playful fun at the elite by comparing them to Tweedledum and Tweedledee but becomes deadly serious when she demands the head of King Charles the First. She sympathizes with Solomon Grundy but delights in the child laborers of Margery Daw. She questions class through the story of Adam and Eve, counting herself among the masses, but damns the rank and files as swine in the same breath.
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Like Riot of Silver Lights [2010-11] (baritone, fl, cl, vln, vl, pno, perc, 13') Text by Stephen Crane from The Black Riders and Other Lines and War is Kind
Premiere by Brian Pettey and the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, Dan Welcher, conducting, at Bass Performance Hall, 11 November 2011.
A novelist and newsman probably best remembered for The Red Badge of Courage, American Stephen Crane (1871—1900) also published two books of poetry, or lines, to use his terminology. A crisis of faith echoes throughout his lines, and from this central idea reverberate themes of spiritual isolation, moral relativism, and blurred definitions of truth. But Crane is neither preachy nor glum. Laconic and mordant, his voice delights in the absurdities of the human condition.
Color plays a pivotal role in Crane’s lines and in my settings. Blacks, whites and grays frame the cycle. Song one, In a lonely place, sets the scene of a wise sage befuddled by the modern technological wonder of the black and white newspaper. A vast and echoless blue perfectly captures the terrifying freedom of casting off the old—this tattered cloak—for the new and unknown. Black and white mix in the third song, Crane’s barbed tongue mocking the bewildered prophet perched on a hill who expects to see the lands of the world as either good or bad but instead finds them to be a confusing opaque gray. Color morphs from gleaming gold and shining silver to a deep blood red in the fourth song when a galloping knight in shining armor abandons his dying steed to storm the castle walls and Save the Lady! An impenetrable black cloaks the landscape of the fifth song and lingers into the seventh and final song as one of two worldviews pondered by the narrator.
Throughout these settings the baritone acts as both protagonist and chorus, participant and observer, assuming a broad range of characters: the cocksure youth, the lost soul, the puzzled prophet, the myopic hero, the weary truth seeker searching for absolutes in an ambiguous world.
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all fall down [2004, Re 2008] (mezzo- or soprano, fl, cl, vln, vc, pno, 11
Like Riot of Silver Lights [2010-11] (baritone, fl, cl, vln, vl, pno, perc, 13')
echo electric [2013] (cl, vln, vc, vibra, live signal processing, 8')
Oh, Popeye! [2014] (a. saxophone, percussion, fixed media, 9')
Convergence [2010] (fl, b. cl, vln, vc, pno, perc, 11'30"
NARCISSUS/echo [2006] (cl, vln, vc, vibra, 8')
Phrase [2006] (cl, vln, vc, pno, 8'30')
Three [2008] (s. saxophone, tbn, pno, 9')
Kaleidoscope (fl, cl, vln, vc, pno, live signal processing, currently unavailable)
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all fall down [2004, Re 08] (mezzo- or soprano, fl, cl, vln, vc, pno, 11') (nine nursery rhymes in five movements) Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation of Harvard University
First Prize: 2013 Cape Fear New Music Festival International Call for Scores
Premiere by Jennifer Cobb and the Ensemble Sospeso, Joshua Colby, conducting, at Studio Seven, New York, New York on May 15, 2005.
COMPLETE PERUSAL RECORDING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
all fall down (2004 & 2008) is a setting of nine nursery rhymes in five movements arranged symmetrically around a scherzo–like middle movement. The rhymes, pithy and profound, address war, class, and politics, and range from When Adam Delved (dated the English Peasant Revolt of 1381) to Louis Carroll’s “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” from Through the Looking Glass (1872). Some rhymes are opaque, others transparent, but all rhymes comment on the human condition as accurately today as when they were first spoken. Throughout all fall down the vocalist acts as the equally sympathetic and sadistic court jester. She pokes playful fun at the elite by comparing them to Tweedledum and Tweedledee but becomes deadly serious when she demands the head of King Charles the First. She sympathizes with Solomon Grundy but delights in the child laborers of Margery Daw. She questions class through the story of Adam and Eve, counting herself among the masses, but damns the rank and files as swine in the same breath.
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Like Riot of Silver Lights [2010-11] (baritone, fl, cl, vln, vl, pno, perc, 13') Text by Stephen Crane from The Black Riders and Other Lines and War is Kind
Premiere by Brian Pettey and the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, Dan Welcher, conducting, at Bass Performance Hall, 11 November 2011.
A novelist and newsman probably best remembered for The Red Badge of Courage, American Stephen Crane (1871—1900) also published two books of poetry, or lines, to use his terminology. A crisis of faith echoes throughout his lines, and from this central idea reverberate themes of spiritual isolation, moral relativism, and blurred definitions of truth. But Crane is neither preachy nor glum. Laconic and mordant, his voice delights in the absurdities of the human condition.
Color plays a pivotal role in Crane’s lines and in my settings. Blacks, whites and grays frame the cycle. Song one, In a lonely place, sets the scene of a wise sage befuddled by the modern technological wonder of the black and white newspaper. A vast and echoless blue perfectly captures the terrifying freedom of casting off the old—this tattered cloak—for the new and unknown. Black and white mix in the third song, Crane’s barbed tongue mocking the bewildered prophet perched on a hill who expects to see the lands of the world as either good or bad but instead finds them to be a confusing opaque gray. Color morphs from gleaming gold and shining silver to a deep blood red in the fourth song when a galloping knight in shining armor abandons his dying steed to storm the castle walls and Save the Lady! An impenetrable black cloaks the landscape of the fifth song and lingers into the seventh and final song as one of two worldviews pondered by the narrator.
Throughout these settings the baritone acts as both protagonist and chorus, participant and observer, assuming a broad range of characters: the cocksure youth, the lost soul, the puzzled prophet, the myopic hero, the weary truth seeker searching for absolutes in an ambiguous world.
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echo electric [2013] (cl, vln, vc, vibra, live signal processing, 8')
Echo electric is a cousin of NARCISSUS/echo, a quartet for a purely acoustic ensemble whose instrumentation I borrowed from Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Echo electric builds on the acoustic forces of NARCISSUS/echo by adding live signal processing and synthesized sounds to the instrumental ensemble with an interactive Max/MSP patch that allows control over the timing of the synthesized sounds, which is precisely notated in the score, as well as parameters of the signal processing (also specified in the score) such as ring modulation frequencies, the speed and direction of Doppler effects, echo length, and feedback depth. I created the synthesized sounds by modeling the spectral content of the acoustic instruments, which I then subjected to various permutations with the help of Open Music, a powerful algorithmic programming language distributed by IRCAM.
The piece develops from two primary sources. The first of these, inspired by the image of Narcissus attempting to kiss his watery reflection, is a continuously evolving (and devilishly tricky!) theme that, like the reflected image of Narcissus on the water’s surface, “ripples” throughout the ensemble to create a radiant kaleidoscope of color and time. Dominating the music and eventually dissolving into a babel of yammering multitudes at the work’s climax, the Narcissus theme also serves as the source of repetitive, granular cells. Portraying Echo mimicking the object of her desire from the distance, these repeating cells ebb and flow throughout the composition, eventually fading to silence as the Narcissus theme mutates into a plaintive melody heard from the solo violin–a timbral metamorphosis representing the transformation of Narcissus.
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Oh, Popeye! [2014] (a. saxophone, percussion, fixed media, 9') Written for and dedicated to the Bent Frequency Duo Project: Jan Baker and Stuart Gerber. ʌg,ʌg,ʌg, ʌg, ʌg,ʌg,ʌg,ʌg,ʌg, ʌg,ʌg,ʌg!!!
Premiere given by Jan Baker and Stuart Gerber at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA on February 14, 2014.
PERUSAL RECORDING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Composed as a single movement in several sections, Oh, Popeye! combines live saxophone and percussion with a collage of sampled audio clips taken from Popeye cartoons in the public domain. The opening section, titled The Big Deep (Popeye comes ashore), begins with submerged, overlapping slides that punch toward a surface of undulating, asymmetrical waves that gather, over the course of several minutes, into a tempest of crashing oscillations. Reaching a peak, these oscillations begin to settle, eventually coalescing into a burst of gleefully buoyant sound clips and player improvisation. A challenge from Popeye’s rival interrupts the merriment to usher in the second section, a grooving dialogue dubbed Hello, Olive! (Three’s a crowd). Always her own gal, Olive keeps her options open, but Bluto fails to impress, his growing frustration fueled by a wise–cracking Popeye and the wonderfully deadpan “damsel in distress” Olive of the 30’s. Entirely improvised, the third section—Fight! (Tattoos, Forearms & Fisticuffs)—calls upon the players to divide their efforts into three “rounds,” with each more intense than the last. Poor Bluto!, a brief epilogue, follows.
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Convergence [2010] (fl, b. cl, vln, vc, pno, perc, 11'30") Commissioned by Boston Musica Viva
Fourth International Ossia New Music Prize
Premiere given by Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman, conducting, 12 November 2010, Tsai Performance Center, Boston.
Convergence begins with the announcement of two contrasting ideas that transform and evolve, from recognizable variations to veiled recollections, as the music unfolds. Transformation results largely from the use of process, a technique of gradually altering sonic qualities by isolating individual elements such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre, and then mutating one or more of these elements through systematic change. Sometimes transparent and at other times obscure, the individual processes in Convergence usually work independently yet simultaneously, creating a kind of process counterpoint and chains of continuously overlapping strands. But there are moments throughout the piece when processes converge, and it is in these moments that structural markers are most clearly heard, their appearance serving to interject a moment of structural clarity, like the gears of a great mechanical clock chiming the hour.
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NARCISSUS/echo [2006] (cl, vln, vc, vibra, 8')
Premiered by Sonic Generator at Spivey Hall (Atlanta, Georgia), 7 May 2007.
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Phrase [2006] (cl, vln, vc, pno, 8'30')
Premiere by Bent Frequency, Eyedrum (Atlanta, Georgia) May 2007.
PERUSAL SCORE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
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Three [2008] (s. saxophone, tbn, pno, 9') Commissioned by the Maharlika Trio
Premiere by the Maharlika Trio at Spivey hall (Atlanta, GA), 16 September 2008.
Three, commissioned by the Maharlika Trio, explores timbral possibilities offered by the unique instrument combination of saxophone, trombone and piano in the context of three movements structured in the traditional tempo scheme of fast, slow, fast. Movement one contrasts a slowly moving unison wind melody with coruscating piano figurations. As the music progresses, the trombone begins to slowly fall behind the saxophone, at first blurring the points of attack between each melodic note and over time transforming harmony into imitative counterpoint. A secondary process changes the shape of the piano figurations. Movement II, “Vast and Mysterious,” begins with static harmonies interspersed with melodic outbursts. As the outbursts subside an eerie call and response emerges followed by a gradual thickening of texture that builds to a climax of rapidly interlocking rhythms which briefly unite before dissolving into a blurred rendition of the opening material. The final movement, a dance of shifting timbres, delights in irregular pulses, sudden dynamic shifts, and interplay between the piano and winds.
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Diptych [2011] (two prepared pianos, 10')
Icarus [2007] (solo piano, 9')
Three Courses for Two Pianos [1996] (two pianos, 9')
Plastic Models (piano, lived signal processing, currently unavailable)
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Diptych [2011] (two prepared pianos, 10') Written for the Bugallo—Williams Piano Duo’s Dancing Cage Project
Premiere by Amy Williams and Jacob Greenberg in March of 2012, College of the Holy Cross, Worcster, MA.
The Bugallo’Williams Piano Duo’sDancing Cage project commissions new works for the same preparations as John Cage’s Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos. Broadly speaking, a diptych is a book-shaped object consisting of two rectangular panels connected by a center hinge. Artists in Classical Antiquity frequently carved intricately detailed portraits, ceremonial scenes, and the like on the front of each panel, at times creating duplicate images and at other times creating related rather than identical images. In my Diptych, the two pianos connect through the metaphorical hinge of music sculpted from Apollonian processes interrupted by grooving, toe–tapping Dionysian excursions. Often, the pianists swap identical music, Piano I assuming the music of Piano II, and Piano II assuming the music of Piano I. In the case of extreme high and low registers, which feature relatively few preparations, the material sounds identical, but for the majority of the music the preparations, which are particular to each instrument, serve to cast each piano in a unique light.
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Icarus [2007] (solo piano, 9') Written for Bent Frequency
Premiere by Lisa Leong in May of 2007, Eyedrum Theatre, Atlanta
Falling and rising melodic patterns dominate Icarus. Over the course of the music these patterns slowly develop into a well—known piece from the classical repertoire. My inclusion of this quote is not intended as the answer to a musical guessing game, but rather as a means to contrast continuous development (movement toward the new and unknown) with the gradual emergence of a familiar tune (movement toward the remembered and known). It is this contradictory experience that interests me, one that simultaneously pushes forwards and backwards. Written for Lisa Leong.
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Three Courses for Two Pianos [1996] (two pianos, 9') Written for the Admony–Kanazawa Piano Duo
Premiere by the Kanazawa–Admony Duo at the Banff Centre (Canada), 7 March 1997.
PERUSAL SCORE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
I developed a fondness for playing with my food at an early age. As a teenager, I attempted to replace this habit with a practiced method of carefully consuming each portion in its entirety before beginning the next, but this ultimately proved too troublesome and artificial. Three Courses for Two Pianos delights in playing with its ingredients. While there are specific courses for each movement, these are freely mixed, at times subtly, at other times brazenly, and always with glee. Bon appétit!
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Altamira Evocations [2015] (solo clarinet, 9')
Music to Accompany Eve Heller’s Creme 21 [2014] (cello, live signal processing, 9')
Mutations [2013] (cello, live signal processing, 8'30")
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Altamira Evocations [2015] (solo clarinet, 9') Written for Collide-O-Scope Music
Premiere by Carlos Cordeiro, Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY, 5 June 2015.
Located near the picturesque medieval village of Santillana del Mar in northern Spain, the Cave of Altamira is a vast network of interconnected passages and cavities rich with Upper Paleolithic cave paintings of animals, abstract shapes, and the human hand. Lost for millennium until a falling tree smashed through a natural rockfall façade that had sealed the cave’s entrance for some 13,000 years, Altamira was chanced upon in the late 19th Century by the youngest daughter of amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. Their discovery of the cave and its paintings is now widely acknowledged as the first of its kind.
Altamira Evocations is an impression of the cave and its paintings as seen by flickering torchlight. Shadow and light dance across ceilings to reveal immense herds grazing on sweeping plains. Nimble deer, sturdy boars, surefooted goats, and noble horses animate and glisten along the walls. A bold red bison, muscles literally bulging by the artist’s incorporation of natural contours in the cave’s surfaces, stands head lowered, steadfast and resolute.
Accompanying the animals are static, immobile imprints of the human hand. A stamp, a signature, or perhaps an acknowledgement of human and wildlife symbiosis, mankind is both subject and artist, a participant and an observer who lives within and without the natural world.
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Music to Accompany Eve Heller’s Creme 21 [2014] (cello, live signal processing, 9') Commissioned by the Alte Schmiede
Premiere: Nov. 28 (2014), Alte Schmiede (Vienna) March 12 (2015), College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA)
Perusal video available on request
Assembled from hundreds of clips taken from educational shorts and feature films, Heller’s Creme 21 raises fundamental questions about time, energy, gravity, and human perception. Taking a cue from Heller’s method, the soundtrack presents a collage assembled from permutations of Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite. Transformed by real-time electronic processing and accompanied by mutated samples also taken from the suite, the music performed by the cellist at first sounds nothing like the Bach, but the suite slowly reveal itself, transforming over the course of the soundtrack from hints and spectral winks to recognizable quotation.
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Mutations [2013] (cello, live signal processing, 8'30") Written for Jan Múller–Szeraws
Premiere given by Jan Múller–Szeraws with Chris Arrell (computer processing) at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, 30 July 2013.
Mutations, commissioned by the Holy Cross Mellon Foundation Summer Research Program for cellist Jan Múller–Szeraws, blurs boundaries between acoustic and electric sounds with the aid of an interactive Max patch that alters the sound of the cello in real–time. Complementing these alterations, which range from bright echoes and spiraling Doppler effects to microtonal distortions, ghostly harmonizations, and whispered glissandi, are prerecorded sounds modeled largely after spectral permutations of cello timbres. These prerecorded sounds mix with the live cello during a performance to create timbres that are neither entirely acoustic nor entirely electronic but rather hybrids that paint new sonic possibilities on a canvas of soaring virtuosity cast in the coloratura of the instrument. In four untitled movements played without pause, Mutations is roughly eight minutes in length.
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Ghosts [2006] (b. saxophone, 8'30") Written for Rhonda Tayler
Premiere by Rhonda Taylor at the 14th World Saxophone Congress (Ljubljana, Slovenia), 6 July 2006.
Ghosts contains five statements of the same melodic material and three interludes. Each repetition of the melodic material progressively replaces pitch with sounds such as gasps, inhales, and exhales, so that by the fifth and final melodic statement the majority of sounds are non–pitched. Those pitches that do remain reveal the skeleton of the melodic line to be the first minuet from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite in D Minor. There are thus two types of ghosts at play in the piece—the ghost of noise and the ghost of history.
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Blur [2006] (solo bassoon, 13'00") Written for Scott Pool Score published by Trevco Music
Premiere by Scott Pool at Spivey Hall (Atlanta, GA), 27 March 2007.
The composition of Blur for solo bassoon began in 2006 and was completed in early 2007. The premiere performance was at Georgia’s Spivey Hall in March of 2007 with additional performances at Fairmont State University and Valdosta State University.
I worked closely with Chris Arrell for the premiere and want to share a few notes on the preparation and performance of this work. As a whole, Blur is a piece that is constantly propelled by forward momentum, especially in the sections marked “Frantic.” As pitch material is gradually replaced with key clicks—a process that eventually reveals a tonal foundation to the work—the general sense of forward motion should always remain. The motion of the fingers is as important as the clicking of the keys, making Blur as much a visual experience as an aural one.
The alternate fingering trills are essentially timbre trills, which can be executed in a variety of ways depending on the instrument of the performer. Often the resonance keys of the smallest finger of the left hand (Left Hand 4 or 5) can be used to achieve the desired result, but the performer should use a combination of alternate fingerings to balance aural effect and technical dexterity.
I hope you will enjoy preparing and performing Blur as much as I have. It will remain in my repertoire as one of my favorite works for solo bassoon.
Scott Pool September 2008
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Diptych(portrait CD) Beauport Classical
Narcissus/echo(Pendulum compilation) Parma Records
Ghosts(Ghosts compilation) Beauport Classical
Reel (for fixed media) Electroshock v.2
A is for Andiamo (for fixed media) Electroshock v.8
Analysis of Grisey’s PartielsSWMC