Particle Fountain

Instrumentation: piano-percussion quartet

Duration: 11′

Program note:

The work was commissioned by Yarn/Wire.

My compositional interest with this piece lies at the intersection between the musically frenetic and the musically static. I wanted to create music that balances between the two but in unpredictable ways. The frenetic aspects of the piece lie in the rhythmic energy of cycling and interrupted pitch patterns; the static aspect occurs in the quiet resonances. At the same time, those pitch patterns, by their very nature repetitive and pulse-oriented, can also be associated with a sort of stasis, just as the resonances, pregnant and weighted with tension, may give one a sense of building energy. With this counterpoint of motion and stillness comes the juxtaposition of instrumental identities. The instruments use their distinct materials, occasionally stealing or sharing with the others, in order delineate themselves from the other instruments. The overall result might be viewed as a sort of perpetual emergence and interruption – a fountain of sorts.

performance by Yarn-Wire