Browse Items (868 total)

• At the Crossing of Five Paths

  At the Crossing of Five Paths consists of five connected short pieces for flute which have been fragmented and rearranged, connected by processed flute sounds. The rearrangement of these elements produces a non-linear temporal experience. All of the elements of a progression remain, but their reordering forces the listener to reconstruct the original linear progression of the pieces after the sound has stopped.

  At the Crossing of Five Paths represents a journey from complexity to simplicity. As the original pieces (in their original order) move from low to high, dissonant to consonant, and rapid to slow, the listener is left with a high, mysterious melody that recedes into the distance. The confusion caused by the fragmentation of these different pieces falls away as a decision is made and a path is chosen.

  This piece was finished in 2008 and written for Wayla Chambo.

• Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy

  Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy was written over a three month period while traveling and hitchhiking throughout Europe, surrounding time spent attending at the IRCAM Manifeste Festival in Paris and the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt. As one might imagine, composing with pencil and paper while constantly on the move can be rather cumbersome, having only short periods of time available to focus, and often taking place in awkward workspaces like cafes, restaurants, hostels, and the apartments of my various hosts. Most of these environments were quite busy and chaotic spaces. This situation presented a challenge after having spent most of my compositional activity to date in an academic setting with a piano or other musical equipment readily available.

  My original intent when I set out was to explore the timbral possibilities of the bass clarinet, utilizing a variety of techniques to produce complex soundscapes and microtonal sonorities that would provide germinal material for the work while unifying the ensemble. In addition to the sonorities that are worked out through sampling and spectral analysis of multiphonics, additional pitch content is generated through an acoustic analogue to a process known in electronic music as “single-sideband modulation,” resulting in a series of combination tones made by adding two frequencies (for instance, a bass clarinet tone and an open scordatura string of the cello), to one another, producing a series that grows exponentially (i.e. 100Hz+200Hz=300Hz, 200Hz+300Hz=500Hz, etc.).

  The title comes from an arguably conceptual device: the low E-flat that simultaneously pervades the work and is non-existent. I imagine that the ensemble is always reaching towards this E-flat as a point of centricity, but never quite arrive; analogous to an asymptote, as it approaches infinity. Entropy can be described as the “measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system,” or the “tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.” (source: American Heritage Dictionary). Taking some poetic liberties in reducing the scientific definition of “entropy” to simply a unit of measurement for chaos, one might say that this work conveys a state of high entropy in music, in stark contrast both to my previous work and to the classical tradition itself. This is a characteristic that I feel reflects not only specific elements of the compositional process, but also the result of the technical demands made on the performers, as well as my state of mind throughout the creation of this work.

• Aspenglow

  Aspenglow (fixed media): The ASPEN system (Automated SPeech Exchange Network) was the first electronic telephone answering machine system at my university. With 80 faculty and staff answering messages, the possibilities for mischief were endless. Composer contact: mobberleyj@umkc.edu Website (scores, recordings and info): http://jamesmobberleymusic.com

• Ascension

  Ascension was originally composed in 1988 for Gary Hill and the UMKC Conservatory Wind Ensemble. It is dedicated to my college roommate Kenneth Wayne Hill, who was killed in action in the Persian Gulf in April, 1988, shortly before I was scheduled to begin this work. It is also lovingly dedicated to his family and to our mutual friends. Kenneth's volatile, hilarious, energetic, and complex personality formed the basis of my musical ideas, while my own emotional reactions to the news of his death and to the heroic and poignant events surrounding the last day of his life, which were released by the U.S. Marines only very slowly and ultimately in incomplete form, shaped the work's structure.

  Kenneth's life was often marked by tremendous obstacles, but my lasting memory of him is one of a spirit impossible to keep down. I imagine his life and his death as one grand ascension.

  The original version was composed using the technology of the day, primarily with synthesized sounds that were selected for their timbral similarity to those of the wind ensemble. In this new version, most of these sounds have been replaced with sampled sounds of various instruments, providing an even more integrated sonic environment. I am very much indebted to James Smart for suggesting this idea. In the process of putting the new accompaniment together, I also fixed several score errors, added some more audible cues, adjusted the score and the playback for more precise synchronization, and lengthened the opening gesture to aid synchronization.

• Art Market

• Armor+2

  a piece inspired by classic synthesis techniques and RPG games
  
  In Armor+2, the interactive computer part acts as an extension of the clarinet. it adds harmony, extends melodic phrase, and creates rhythmic accompaniment that are difficult/impossible for a human accompaniment. The computer part’s role is similar to that of a rare enchanted item in a role-playing game.

• Arctic Winds

  Arctic Winds transports me to the Arctic (where I’ve never been, but dream of). The piece is sparse, with occasional frantic “windstorms” stirring up the vast frozen expanse. Everything is suspended, in near silence, with occasional forays dropping low into blasts of “wind.” Each sound is crystallized, exaggerated, as in our dreams.

  The primary sound sources are dry ice and several sizes of ball bearings rolling across a variety of drumheads, attached and unattached. I started working on this piece when I had a 102 degree temperature coupled with chills for three days. I suspect that experiencing those internal extremes conjured up those beautiful arctic dreams and this somewhat playful piece.

• Arched Interiors II

  Arched Interiors II (2008) is a musical composition for piano and electro-acoustically transformed sound. The mode of performance for the piano involves bowing and scraping the strings to produce timbral modulations shaped directly by the physical gesture. These sound-gestures provide both the motivic foundation for the composition and the recorded source audio for development of the electroacoustic sound. The original version of Arched Interiors was written in 1991 for Margaret Leng Tan, and premiered by her in 1992 in the ORF Funkhaus Wien. This original version, as well as another, Double Arched Interiors for two pianos without electroacoustic sound, included additional passages focused on complex plucking techniques.

• Apparitions

• Apparent Horizon

  I started gathering video images for Apparent Horizon six years prior to its completion. These shots slowly reveal information in various landscapes by holding still on an image for several seconds, then zooming in or out or panning to reveal more detail, an unusual vista, rock formation, etc. It occurred to me that it also might be interesting to see what might be “revealed” from an overhead view. Since it was impractical to rent airplanes for this purpose, I incorporated NASA footage taken by the Space Shuttle and Apollo series astronauts. At times it is difficult to distinguish views of the earth from space from those taken on the earth’s surface.

  Many of the earthbound shots are of rather “alien” landscapes—those where I, as a human being, don’t really fit in—I’m the alien there. In these often desolate places the only sounds one hears are wind, insects, a scant number of birds and animals, and a rare rainstorm. I decided to take our constant human chatter and transpose it into sounds somewhat reminiscent of nature’s sounds in the landscapes to which they are attached or to transform them into somewhat “otherworldly” sounds. This was an attempt to convey an aural impression of the sensations I have experienced while in these earthbound landscapes and those sensations I imagine the astronauts might experience while viewing the earth from space. Sound sources consisted of transmissions from/through space and were from Space Shuttle and Apollo missions, satellite transmissions, and shortwave radio broadcasts. Often I chose sections that were full of static and distortion—signals that were reaching unintelligibility. There are Morse Code “crickets” at Bryce Canyon and static “rain” at the Canyonlands. This is the third work in a series of video pieces based on transformations of human-made or generated sounds, the previous two being Airwaves (realities) and Liquid Metal.