Archetype I: Iteration I

from Archetype I: Pneumatic Metaphor

SCORE (EXCERPT):

Instrumentation: violin and piano

Duration: ca. 10′ – 17′

Program note:

The Archetype composition project involves a series of what I like to think of as schematic scores for the building of more standard scores. Each archetype involves repeating modules of bars in which the numbers of repetitions and some of the pitch, rhythm, timbral and dynamic material is left open. The modules provide a limited set of choices that are to be determined beforehand by the performer(s) or the composer or anyone else who is agreed by the performers to have an interest in doing so. The predetermined materials are to be sketched out such that a new score is composed as an “iteration” of the archetype that then becomes a new, notated composition in itself. For example, the first performance of the original archetype would be considered Archetype I: Iteration I; a second performance of the archetype, with new choices on numbers of repetitions and the like would be considered Archetype I: Iteration II. These iterations may, themselves, have open elements built into the score (by the composer) such that a new, recursive statement of that iteration becomes a new score, and so on.

The following score is the first iteration of Archetype I, in which I composed out the multitude of choices (numbers of repetitions of sections, sets of pitches to play, etc.). I then composed additional elements within this context (new material, for instance, using graphic notation or pitch cells).