COMPEL Omeka Dev

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  • Alter Ego was written for my friend and colleague Carter Enyeart, who provided not only the idea behind the piece and its reason for being, but also the recorded sound material for the fixed media. Alter Ego combines a live instrumental performer with playback of organized and sculpted sounds taken from that same instrument. Hence the sound world of the performance remains that of the acoustic instrument, but the resulting piece enlarges that sound world with all the techniques that the digital medium provides.

    The combination of live performance with fixed playback provides the opportunity to explore the changing relationships between the two entities. The live performer is the focus, both visual and emotional, for the audience, while the sounds in the speakers serve as invisible accompanist. As with a human accompanist, there are opportunities for leading as well as supporting roles as the piece progresses. After an opening instrumental solo, the CD playback begins to “learn” what the ‘cellist is doing. Its contribution begins as subtle environmental ambience, then moves through harmonic/rhythmic accompaniment to real counterpoint and eventually independence. At this point the roles reverse (the alter ego comes to the fore), as the CD provides a short solo, then begins a different type of music which the live performer begins to “learn.” The finale features the most complete integration of the two elements and the most tightly knit music of the piece. By this point the roles are as equal and cooperative as possible.

    One other important note…in January of 2006 one of my most important mentors, Roger Hannay, passed away. I learned an enormous amount about composition, and especially about being a composer, from Roger, whose own alter ego, if he would allow me to characterize it that way, was ‘Hrothgar’, a Danish king from the Beowulf legends. Alter Ego is an homage, both to the man and to his music, with fond appreciation for both.

  • VOX METALLICA (2006), for fixed 2-channel digital media, uses a collection of recordings of non-singing sounds from several different voices, plus recordings of guitars, bass guitar, drum set, and organ as sound sources. Context being a critical part of our memory and pattern-recognition processes, Vox Metallica plays with familiar and non-familiar juxtapositions of elements from “classical” electro-acoustic and popular music. After all, it’s both a short walk, and a very long walk, from uptown to downtown…

  • Written for pianists Leah Hokanson and Daniel Koppelman, and dedicated to the 343 New York City Firefighters who lost their lives in the attacks on 9/11/2001.

  • bats with baby faces in the violet light was created using the sounds of various objects the composer found around his home. the sounds are arranged into various gestural contexts, often with very little signal processing. the primary aesthetic aim of the piece is to exploit the unplanned and frequently unpredictable pitched sounds which often burst forth from, or which are components of, noisier, percussive gestures.

  • Excerpt of a live performance of "In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte" for kalimba and electronics by percussionist Patti Cudd (www.patticudd.com).

    In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte consists of contrapuntal dialogue between a live equal-tempered kalimba and its just-intoned and/or ring-modulated electronic reflections.

  • “…ce dangereux supplément…” is a set of phonetic studies for voice, video, and electronics. A suite of three pieces [(tRas), (spɛktʁ), and (sɑ̃dʁ)] the work is based on a close examination of the sounds used in everyday linguistic activity, which are juxtaposed against more extreme vocal effects. The live performance is supplemented with electronic voices which stretch and transform this common vocality. The visuals range from rapid-fire successions of symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet, to more suspended meditations on elaborately arranged orthographic tapestries made from the same symbols.

    “…ce dangereux supplément…” is a poetic rehearsal of the Derridean supplement, that unbelonging excess in a binary opposition which is (contradictorily) crucially indispensable. This takes place throughout the work via a dialectic between linguistic articulation (consonants) and voiced intonation (vowels). While moving between these two poles, the performer acts out a futile search for the primary referent (or “master signifier”), but eventually realizes all that is to be found is an infinite hauntology, a spectral chain of traces, specters, and cinders.

  • “For what is so grotesquely reduced is, in a sense, liberated from its meaning—its tininess being the outstanding thing about it. It is both a whole (that is, complete) and a fragment (so tiny, the wrong scale).” – Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn

    Let’s celebrate our corpse strewn future! was composed for Brendan Fitzgerald and Wooden Cities in the summer of 2015.

  • Study for Vox Inhumana (2000) is a brief exploration of the sound world that is to form the basis for a series of larger and varied works that combine vocal sounds (non-singing) with each other (tape compositions and works for vocal improvisation ensemble), with instruments, and with combinations of live vocal and instrumental sounds with both recorded and interactive computer elements. The human voice is the most varied instrument of all, and its rich soundfield has yet to be tapped fully – in fact it may never be. The sounds in this recording were produced and recorded by the composer, representing only one of thousands of vocal treasuries. The piece uses Csound and sound editing software to combine collage techniques with grooves and other devices. The structure is at times controlled and at times rhapsodic, reflecting the moods and bends of the creative (snapped) mind of its composer.

  • Icarus Wept is a five-movement work commissioned by Keith Benjamin for his trumpet and organ duo Clarion, with organist Melody Turnquist-Steed. This version of the work is for trumpet and tape only, with organ sounds on tape. It was funded by a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, “a federal agency”; therefore the original concept, involving full frontal nudity, had to be abandoned. The tape sounds are drawn from an impromptu recording session and brain fry in which we came up not only with trumpet sounds of all kinds but also with the formula for a partially androgynacious anodized serial copolymer (patent pending). We also recorded a wide variety of other sounds (e.g. Keith’s trumpet stand, swirling coins, laughter/vocal sounds, and various expletives). The title, Icarus Wept, was loosely inspired by the legendary flight of Icarus toward the sun and the sudden realization of the fatal mistake. Three movement titles reflect themes of Icarus or of the sky. Getting Waxed, Climbing the Blue Staircase (from a Native American Peyote Song), and Eleven Feet from the Sun. However, Somebody Else’s Face and the newly completed first movement, Strap on Your Lobster, have nothing to do with Icarus at all, or with weeping either, pretty much.

  • In 1987 I saw Bert Turetzky perform Kenneth Gaburo’s ‘INSIDE’ and Tom Johnson’s ‘FAILING’ at a contemporary music festival. I remember hoping at the time that I would one day get the opportunity to write for Bert. I also remember being impressed not only with his bass playing but also with his ability to control the bass and his voice at the same time. When he asked me, some years later, to compose him a piece, I decided to incorporate vocal sounds into the fabric of the piece, though in a rather different way from the two pieces I had heard. As a result, TNT (Tureztky ‘N’ Tape) uses both vocal and bass sounds to make the tape part, and calls upon the performer to use both instrument and voice simultaneously, with extensive and intricate interaction between soloist and tape, especially in the rhythmic “groove” sections. In these, soloist and tape participate in the formation of, or improvisation over multi-layered grooves that might be at home in a jazz or latin sound. The tape part was constructed entirely of bass and vocal sounds, collected, edited, and mixed using Csound software on a NextStation computer. It was performed by Bert Turetzky as a work-in-progress in 1997, then revised, remixed, and completed for premiere performance by bassist Robert Black in Estonia in 2001, with a recording on the CDCM series.
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If you see an error or would like to add content to COMPEL, please leave a comment or contact Hollis Wittman at hollisw@vt.edu.