Composing Today

23 February

I’ve taken the piece to a very strange place, what I think will effectively bring in the noisy third ritornello. After the ensemble slows down and becomes one, I was able to incorporate a sound that to me is reminiscent of the Laotian mouth organ I heard an old man play in a Thai village. This is tied in through the use of the 5, 7 and 11 quarter-tone cycles. This struggles with the cyclic harmonies which eventually reach a culmination point with the entrance of the piano on the cluster chords from the meltdown section of the second ritornello. The ensemble doesn’t give up so easily and with the piano clustering in the middle of the keyboard the entire ensemble plays fff an unbelievably dissonant chord built from the 11-quarter-tone cycle. This repeats after a pause, is joined by the powerful percussion on the skinned percussion before the entire ensemble takes up the original percussion figure from the blocks – transposed to various levels. From there the third ritornello will enter. I will have to work to compose it out. We are at about the 8:30, 8:45 point in the piece (on the realization) in real life its probably more like 10:00, I’m thinking the third ritornello will be quick before the next three relatively short sections and the culminating ritornello. Perhaps this noise chord will overtake the structure, eating away at it before the final ritornello. I’m also thinking that the three final solos – for Cello, Violin and Horn will make use of an extremely limited palette of pitches.