Time's Encomium

Charles Wuorinen - Time's Encomium

Charles Wuorinen won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for this piece of electronic music and Wuorinen still has the distinction of being the youngest Pulitzer Prize winner in the music category at age 31.

realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York

"Time's Encomium" is the title because in this work everything depends on the absolute, not the seeming, length of events and sections. Being electronic, "Time's Encomium" has no inflective dimension. Its rhythm is always quantitative, never qualitative. Because I need time, I praise it; hence the title. Because it doesn't need me, I approach it respectfully; hence the word "encomium."...
Side One is generative, but not completely. It exposes and develops basic pitch and time relations. Therefore it may be called fundamental.
Side Two is developmental, but not completely. It mainly varies pre-existing material. Therefore it may be called ornamental. Those who like relatively severe and slowly-unfolding music should listen first to Side One. Those who like complex and rapidly unfolding music should listen first to Side Two. Eventually, both parts should be listened to in succession, with a break between.

"Time's Encomium" was composed and realized between January 1968 and January 1969, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. I employed primarily the RCA Synthesizer, and therefore (because of that device's characteristics) the basic materials are the twelve tempered pitch classes, and pitch-derived time relations. The RCA Synthesizer - familiar through several works of Milton Babbitt - is prejudiced by its design toward 12-tone equal temperament. This may be a disadvantage if one is attempting non-tempered pitch relations; but if one accepts the limitation as a boundary condition of one's work from the start, it ceases to be a problem. In the near future, however, when computer synthesis becomes widespread, the issue will disappear.
Afterwards, I made the large-scale structure by processing the synthesized material in one of the Center's analog studios. Thus the work consists of a core of synthesized music, most of which appears in Part I, surrounded and interlarded with analog-studio transformations of that music. The synthesized can always be identified by its clarity of pitch, and the familiar, almost "instrumental" sound of its constituent events. The processed almost always contains reverberation. Thus, metaphorically, the listener stands in the midst of the synthesized music, which presents itself to him with maximal clarity; and stretching away from him, becoming more and more blurred in detail, the various transformations - from the slightly altered to the unrecognizable. (Charles Wuorinen)

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Time's Encomium Part I {14:28}

Side Two

1. Time's Encomium Part II {16:18}

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