Scoring: viola sola (may be slightly amplified) and
digital audio playback (CD or DVD).
Duration: 8 minutes
Premiere:
18
November 2005
Juilliard School, Paul Hall
New York, NY
Glenda Goodman - viola
Notes:
visible light was composed at the end
of a seemingly endless 21-month writer’s block after
the completion of my opera, beckett. In part, this
hiatus was inspired by the usual post-partum depression
one gets after finishing a large work, as well as being
inspired by a deepening disgust with the “academicization”
of contemporary art-music. (I will be sensitive in this
brief polemic not to describe the word “academic.”
Please use discresion, as well as, please fill in the gaps.)
Post-partum blues aside, it occurred to me during this time
that “compositional” academia sees it’s music
as the apex of biased teleology of musical history in which
all music that does not emerge from it is inconsequential,
like dust in cracks. This iconoclastic vision of art-music
ultimately causes its own demise as well as its own atrophy.
It is possible that some of the best music is being made
outside of the institution as well as concert halls.
The truth is, I solved my writer’s
block by making the conscious decision to reject academia. visible light emerges from this steadfast rejection
of academic priniciples, in that it chooses to synthesize
inconsequential music(s) with technology, et alia. The piece, like most of my pieces for tape and instrument(s),
usually starts with composing the tape part first, or essentially,
composing a field of resonance. Since the instrumental (live)
part is composed later, the instrumental music is constantly
in the process of reconstructing a deconstruction. One of
the interesting characteristics, particularly in this piece,
is that it uses only three samples: a chain of five viola
harmonics, the sound of a train brake and a female voice
reading a text. In the end, these samples blend together
in a strange and ominous homogenous texture, which makes
it impossible at times to determine which is which.
In the end, the piece is a chain of signifiers
looking for a signified. I don’t believe they find
one. The piece is presumably about light (particularly about
tungsten light striking stainless steel and sunspots in
a duststorm): yet it isn’t. The piece is about vacancy,
regret, and urgency: yet it isn’t. The piece is about
the plasticity of sample material and (re)constructions:
but it isn’t. In the end, that which is not said is
what is implied.
visible light was composed for
and is dedicated to Glenda Goodman.
-
v.c.
18. xi. 05
manhattan
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