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Duration: 8:41
The Metropolis Ensemble; Andrew Cyr, conductor
Commissioned by the MATA Festival for the Metropolis Ensemble. Premiered at (Le) Poisson Rouge, New York City, on May 12, 2011.
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(program notes written in 2011)
My program notes sometimes function as a graveyard of discarded dissertation topics, and here's one half-baked idea:
When a particular technology emerges (e.g., the harpsichord), it comes bundled with a particular set of capabilities and limitations (e.g., the ease of playing many notes quickly on the harpsichord, and the lack of dynamic control over a single note). Composers find practical solutions to these limitations (e.g., octave doublings, trills, and heightened rhythmic activity in passages that ought to sound loud), and these devices become accepted as aesthetically appealing, ensuring their continued use after the original technology has been replaced or new technologies developed (e.g., similar musical solutions in the loud passages of a Haydn piano sonata, despite the instrument's dynamic control).
According to the dictionary.com app on my phone, a "skeuomorph" is "an ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques." A feature I find in my own work and that of my peers is a tendency to be interested in connections between electronic music and instrumental music, technologically distinct but, musically, increasingly related.
Skeuomorphic Tendencies is dedicated to my partner, Doug Brooks, for our tenth anniversary (during which I was editing this score).
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