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f(f(4))[Kr]5s118d1:}{:Fr.I.a–k
- a. al-Gharaniq IIII — Augsburg, Deutschland - Montag, 23. Mai
- b. bA_32..Budapest, Magyar Köztársaság - 2011. V. 30, hétfő
- c. bA_33..2 Hillcrest, Ponca City, OK — 8/20/2011 8:01 AM
- d. Såizburg, Österreich — Dienstag, 26. Mai 18:45
- e. al-Gharaniq IIIII:}{:bA_34..Wien, Österreich — Freitag, 27. Mai, 11:31
- f. bA_35..train from Budapest to Praha — 2011. VI. 1
- g. bA_36:}{:p@|_iMps3s+ Θ..2809 Kingston, Ponca City, OK — Sunday 8/21/11 8:03
- h. Rosslyn, VA (outside of Washington D.C.) — Sat. June 18th, 21:48
- i. Füßen, Deutschland — Mittwoch, 25. Mai
- j. Praha, Česká republika — čtvrtek, 2. června 12:50
- k. Erlangen, Deutschland (Andrea and Jenns) — Sonntag, 5. Juni 11:03
Date Completed: Aug '11
Part of Series: Fr.#.a…
Rydberg
f(f(x))
al-Gharaniq
broken Aphorisms
Palimpsest
Score: PDF
Recording: This piece is presented in full
on my album BABEL fragments
Title Explanation:
This video—especially the second half—discusses both the title and the music of this piece in some detail:
f(f(4))[Kr]5s118d1:}{:Fr.I.a–k is a member of (primarily) three of my series. It's a member of the f(f(x)) series, meaning that it contains several smaller piece inside the larger collection (these include a few pieces from yet more series, but I won't go into that here). It's also a member of my Rydberg series, which is why there's an electron configuration label in the title. This means that the music throughout is often concerned with the collisions and combinations of "classical" and "quantum" sounds. Finally, it's a member of myFr.#.a… series, and like all such pieces is named as if each movment were being systematically labeled at a museum or archaelogical expedition. Each individual movement is also labeled with the date, time and circumstances of its initial composition. This is the first collection of these types of fragmentary sketches, and there are eleven of them—labeled a–k.
Overview:
The following is mostly taken from the introductory pages of the score:
This 11-movement piece is, in a sense, two pieces simultaneously: [Kr]5s118d1, a piece metaphorically exploring the collision of quantum and classical physics, and Fr.I.a–k, a collection of short fragments written in one sitting in various locations in the manner of diary entries. The f(f(4)) part of the title however, points to another aspect of the structure—the large scale composition contains several smaller pieces which are, at least theoretically, completely separable from the larger composition. The pieces contained within this piece are:
- al-Gharaniq IIII (movement a)
- brokenAphorisms_32–36 (movements b–c & e–g)
- al-Gharaniq IIIII (movement e)
- p@|_iMps3s+ Θ (two movements, both contained in larger movement g)
1, 3 and 4 are really probably too short to actually be worth performing on their own, but brokenAphorisms_32–36 can absolutely be performed without the rest of the collection.
At the end of movement i, all three instruments are asked to tune one of their string down one semitone, and the final two movements are performed in this manner. The notes in the score show fingerings, not actual pitch, but colored notation is used to clarify which notes are played on the detuned string. If the detuning cause a major problem for the remainder of the program, the final two movements can be omitted (including, of course, the Tuning Transition).
Personal Crap:
Check the Detailed Analysis below for descriptions of the personal circumstances behind each individual movement. All but three of these movements were written during a trip I took with my wife through several countries in Europe. We began in Germany, took a train through Austria, then to Hungary, the Czech Republic and finally back to Germany. Most of these pieces were written in the mornings in our hotel rooms or apartments.
Detailed Analysis:
- Fr.I.a
- This was the first "diary entry" piece I ever wrote, and it was written during a trip my wife and I took through several European countries (as were most of the other movements). This particular piece was written in Augsburg, Germany, and, like all al-Gharaniq pieces, it is structured such that implicit aspects of one section take over and become the dominant characteristic of the next. The (012) harmony of the opening takes over, with an implicit sense of pulse. This regular accentuation then takes over to create the harsh middle section, until repetition itself comes to dominate in turn. The implicit independence of notes in this part takes over until the total chaos and independence of "brain zaps" is at the fore. The tiny silences in between these bursts of sound ultimately overtake the soundworld until the piece becomes total silence. Oh, and this is apropos of nothing, but the apartment we rented in Augsburg had a happy cat named Deuter who often played with a little toy pig.
- Fr.I.b
- This piece was started in Vienna, Austria—in honor of which I used Anton Webern's tone row from his Symphonie, Op. 21. This row is a palindrome, and I tried to emphasize this by using an actual mirror image of the row in the score itself. The piece was conceived and notated so that it follows the shape of a Bohr model of a hydrogen atom with occasional excitations of the "electron" into so-called Rydberg states. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, and I won't belabor the details here, but you should really read up on Rydberg atoms, which are extremely, extremely cool. Anyway, this is a particularly overt example of the overriding themes of the [Kr]5s118d1 part of the full composition. Obviously, this particular score is rather difficult to read, so performers should feel free to use the performance version of the score in the appendix. Although initially conceived in Vienna, the actual piece was composed on a roof terrace above our apartment in Budapest on an absolutely gorgeous Hungarian morning.
- Fr.I.c
- This piece was written in my father's house in Ponca City, OK, at the first piano I ever played on as a very young boy. I don't remember much about those days, but I definitely remember when my mom put labels on a few of the keys to help teach me the letter names of the notes (these labels are still there and can be seen in the photo page). I also remember learning how to play Heart and Soul and my first ever "composition" which was mostly just me banging around on the piano trying to loosely tell the story of David and the Phoenix, one of my favorite childhood books. Anyway, the visual layout of this piece was inspired by George Crumb's Black Angels, and should be possible to read from in performance. A warning however, unlike every other movement, the instruments are notated with the cello in between the two violins. If preferred, the performance version in the appendix can be used instead.
- Fr.I.d
- Written in Salzburg, Austria. I couldn't resist quoting Mozart's "Confutatis" from his Requiem mass, and I doubt he would have approved of the crazy treatment of his themes. I was writing Fr.I.a-k with Jean Cook and Hubert Chen in mind as the violinists, and I correctly thought Hubert would be perfect playing a demented version of the primary theme. Jenny and I were only in Salzburg for a brief time, so this piece was written just before going to bed on our one night at the hotel. I had downloaded a PDF of the Mozart score on my phone, and I remember how excited I was when I realized that I could do a version of the "voca me" part of the song entirely in natural harmonics. Yes, I get excited about those kinds of things.
- Fr.I.e
- I wrote this movement in Vienna, and it was another entirely visual conception. I wanted to write a piece that sounded like a machine pre-programmed with a certain sequence of pitches that has each one switched on gradually until the entire pattern is revealed. The ending is a reverse of this process, as the notes of the concluding cluster are systematically turned off. Like the a movement, this fragment is an al-Gharaniq piece, with a motive taking over, then the implicit duple structure during the 12/8 becomes the dominant 4/4 accentuation. Occasional fifths turn into constant fifths until the rhythm dies exposing pure interval. The desk in our apartment that I wrote this on was the best goddamn composition desk ever. Much like movement b, this piece would be very difficult to read directly from the visual score, and a performance version is provided in the Appendix.
- Fr.I.f
- Jenny and I took a train from Budapest to Prague, and I listened to several pieces by Leoš Janáček to get myself in the mood for the Czech Republic. Something about his Sinfonia inspired me to scribble down the basic idea for this movement, wherein a constantly-streaming melodic motive flows like a river throughout the fragment, shifting between each instrument and eventually spawning tributaries until all three instruments are playing it asynchronously. The stream motive simply repeats over and over when an instrument has the wavy staff notated in its position, the performers shouldn't try to have exactly the same number of repetitions as notated, and in fact they will almost certainly play it many more times than it appears. A performance version of this score is provided in the appendix, but I doubt that it's actually necessary.
- Fr.I.g
- This fragment was written at my mom's house the day after the movement written at my dad's. It was composed at the piano I used throughout my school years before college, and is a member of my Palimpsest series of pieces. These pieces are always in two movements, and that's still the case here, but the two movements are cut up and distributed throughout the actual fragment. Both sections deal with cluster harmonies, but the first "Movement" represents the classical conception of atomic physics—discrete particles moving in a paradoxically orderly chaos. The second "movement" shifts to a quantum perspective, as continuous structures gradually meld into each other before diverging again. This is the last purely visual score of the collection, and a slightly more straightforward version of the score is in the appendix, but it probably won't be necessary.
- Fr.I.h
- Jenny had to go to a reception in Washington, D.C. for her architecture firm (a fancy-ass dinner party featuring players from the Washington Nationals!), and I joined her since she'd have lots of spare time to visit a few museums and just generally hang out. During the party itself, I stayed at our hotel in Rosslyn, VA and went to the lounge downstairs to have some wine and write a new fragment. Both Jenny and I are enormous fans of The West Wing by Aaron Sorkin, and were totally geeked out when we discovered that the (SPOILER ALERT!!) attempted assassination scene from the end of Season One was filmed directly outside our window. I don't know if thinking about this scene inspired me to write a mournful tune that climaxes with angry cluster chords, but let's just say that it did.
- Fr.I.i
- During an earlier stage in our European trip, after our stay in Augsburg, we stayed at a hotel in a town named Füßen, apparently so named because it's at the feet of the Austro-German Alps. We stayed there because we wanted to hike on a mountain named Tegelberg and see the famous Neuschwanstein castle, easily accessible from a cable car near the town. The morning of our hike, I wrote this fragment on a little table in the garden outside of our hotel room, with tons of little sweat bees occasionally swarming around me. After this particularly short fragment, there's a tuning transition which is a separate tiny piece that provides an opportunity for the instruments to detune one string each for the final two movements.
- Fr.I.j
- Our apartment in Prague had a curious desk with one side supported by an aquarium, and I couldn't resist using it to write this fragment. I had already decided that the last pieces in the collection would be written with detuned strings, and it was primarily the profusion of unique natural harmonics allowed by the new tuning that I wanted to explore. This fragment is almost exclusively made out of these harmonics, including the difficult double-stops during the climax. Blue notes indicate pitches that are played on the detuned strings.
- Fr.I.k
- The final stop in our 2011 European vacation was the new home of my close friend and fellow ASM member Andrea La Rose and her wife Jen Michalsky in Erlangen, Germany. I blame Andrea for the difficult meters and metric shifts during the beginning and ending of the fragment. She more than made up for it when she introduced me to the gustatory wonder that is Rauchbier, a beer that is truly made by the gods themselves. What noble Prometheus introduced this glorious libation to our mortal realm? Anyway, this movement takes advantage of the raucous open-string discordance made possible by the half-step detuning, which is again indicated by colored notation, though red instead of blue. I was particularly looking forward to hearing Jean shred through the violin solos, and she did not disappoint.