Year composed: 2008
Duration: 14′
Instrumentation: amplified harpsichord and prepared piano
Movements:
I. Nuts and Bolts
II. Machinations
III. Frame Switch
IV. A note to follow sol
V. Coming Back
Commissioned by Keynote+, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK, March 2008
Notes:
Some years ago Jane Chapman and Kate Ryder of the duo keynote+ gave a memorable concert at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley. Their combination of harpsichord and prepared piano created a strikingly unusual sound-world, and I thought, what a strange and interesting combination! Such noisy pitches! I grew excited considering these new possibilities for a piece.
But when I sat down to start the work, the problems began…the preparations for the piano: how would they really sound? So I went to CNMAT for help, and Michael Zbyszynski constructed a Max/MSP software patch that would play the sounds when I touched them on a keyboard. That helped; the odd structure and placement of the sounds began to take shape in my mind. Then I took a big bag of hardware supplies, and according to John Cage’s instructions for his Sonatas and Interludes prepared a piano that I could work continuously on. That helped even more, and the piece began to take shape. I decided to use techniques involving dampening piano strings with the fingertip, plucking the strings with the nail, touching the strings to get certain harmonics, and using the Sostenuto Pedal, all to complement the already percussive and noisy prepared sounds.
Next, the harpsichord. I had spent a lot of time fooling around on a harpsichord a few years ago when I composed a short piece called The Open Frame. I particularly liked the low resonant pitches on the harpsichord, and decided to build the structure of the piece, especially movements one and five, on a tonality revolving around this lowest point. The harpsichord’s music is full of elaborate embellishing gestures as well as mechanical, machine-like ideas.
Playing a round is full of jokes, as you can see from the title. There are lots of musical canons, and there are melodic symmetries echoed between the two instruments. “Machinations” shoots rapidly back and forth between the two performers, like an out-of-kilter machine. “Frame Switch”, named after the switching mechanism that trains use to switch tracks, is a dialogue between a sort of embellished chorale in the harpsichord, and a strange scale in the piano—a scale that runs up and down the prepared pitches (and only those pitches). “A note to follow sol” plays on the idea of ringing bells and a sober sort of four and five-part counterpoint. Playing a round was premiered in at London’s Goldsmiths College in March of 2007, and is dedicated to Jane and Kate.