Ping/Traces

Roger Reynolds - Ping/Traces

Ping (1968)

Roger Reynolds - piano

Karen Reynolds - flute

Paul Chihara - harmonium, bowed-cymbal and tam-tam

Alan Johnson - electronics

The conception of PING, evolved during a two-year germination period, includes three elements: the Beckett text on 160 slides designed by Karen Reynolds; a film; and combined instrumental, taped, and electronic sound. In live performance the three strands of events occur simultaneously but are not synchronized. As a recorded performance, PING is a self-sustained composition of instrumental improvization over taped and electronic music. The conditions circumscribing the improvised sound in the total intermedial context were used as a basis for creating an independent sound piece. The four performers, accustomed to improvising together under the intermedial conditions, had no trouble concentrating a higher event density within the music alone for this recording.

PING is the first break in the composer's commitment to fully defined, ornamental textures. The piece is without score, although the individual parts are detailed. The overall flow is divided into three sections, approximately 5, 10, and 7 minutes long, defined and confined by four types of limits within which the performers improvise. These limits consist of assigned pitch materials, dynamic shapes, rhythmic relations, and instrumental performance techniques.

Traces (1969)

Yuji Takahashi - piano

Karen Reynolds - flute

Lin Barron - cello

Alan Johnson - electronics

TRACES was written for the composer-pianist Yuji Takahashi. Scored for solo piano, with flute, cello, ring modulator, signal generator, and 6 independent channels of taped sound, this work is concerned not only with events but with their residues (traces).

The pianist makes a series of 9 statements in the form of 3 interrelated groups of 3 short movements. The flute and cello draw on events (traces, clues) in these statements, extending them simply, without development or elaboration. There is a quality of rather timeless dwelling on some of these interpiece extensions (vestigal sound-traces).

(Dictionary: trace. A mark or line left by anything that has passed; footprint, track, trail; a sign or evidence of some past thing; a vestige.)

(from the liner notes)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Ping {21:55}

Side 2

1. Traces {23:19}

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New Music for Piano(s)

various artists compilation - New Music for Piano(s)

all pieces performed by Yuji Takahashi

* not actually the cover, it's a photo of Takahashi; cover wasn't quite fit enough to be photographed

Excerpts from the liner notes:

Herma

"Bond," "foundation," "embryo." This piece is based on logical operations imposed upon classes of pitches; this is why I call this music "symbolic." Starting from the four classes defined in the score, others can be formed outside of time, as a result of the complementary relationship (negation), e.g., class A; the negation of A is written in the score A; also as a result of the operation of union (disjunction) and of intersection (conjunction). Union is shown symbolically by the sign +, and intersection by the juxtaposition of letters. Union corresponds to or and intersection to and. This A+B signifies that class in which the elements belong either to A or B; AB indicates the class in which the elements belong to classes A and B at the same time. The classes in this piece are defined solely within the realm of pitch. (Iannis Xenakis)

Fantasy for Pianist

"Fantasy for Pianist" was written during 1963-64 in Paris. Frankly concerned with sonority and ornament (it was originally based on an analysis of the textural features of four photos - stalks, vines, twigs in the snow) the work maintains a complex and detailed order. Forms of serialization were applied to proportional time structures (at all architectonic levels), pitch, dynamics, and attach characteristics; but all techniques were used primarily as stimulants to invention. The piece, as it evolved, determined its attach characteristics; but all techniques were used primarily as stimulants to invention. The piece, as it evolved, determined its own priorities which took precedence over continued allegiance to any particular technical device. Only the time structure remained firm from conception to completion. (Roger Reynolds)

Metathesis

"Metathesis" - to place differently; transposition; change or reversal of condition; the transposition of letters or sounds in a word; the interchange of atoms or groups of atoms between two molecules, the structure of the molecules being not otherwise altered, double decomposition. The structure is based on the subgroups of a permutation group of degree 6 and order 24, which are applied to the various factors of the tone events for piano, such as the density, the duration, the dynamic form, the tone form (all of them are extratemporal structures). The temporal structures are stochastic. The work was written at Tanglewood in 1968 and is dedicated to Gunther Schuller. (Yuji Takahashi)

Corroboree

"Corroboree" (for 3 pianos) was composed in 1963-64 on commission from Radio Bremen, Germany, and first performed in that city by Aloys, Alfons and Bernhardt Kontarsky in May 1964. The Work is dedicated to them. The title is an Australian native word of which webster says: "a nocturnal festivity with songs and symbolic dances by which the Australian aborigines celebrate events of importance: a noisy festivity: tumult." It will be a little noisy, and although the Kontarsky brothers are not Australian (and actually did not sing or dance) the festivity aspect of any of their activities is legendary and joyous, and thus the title seems quite apt. ...

When Yuji suggested this work for his record I had not considered the possibility of one pianist playing all three of the parts ("through the magic of recording"), but it is of course practical and interesting in this context. The technique was to record the first piano part and then the second while hearing the first and acting and reacting to the structure and the impulsive flexibility potentials within the given form:... then the third part in relation to the first two. The immediacy of "playing together" remains with the added fact of there being a single performance concept, rather than a correlation of three, as it was initally conceived. Although there are three of him here the nature of the piece is less virtuosic than the other works on the record, in which one might think that there were five of him. Yuji to any coefficient, and in all cases, is an astonishing technician and "poet." (Earle Brown)

Tracklisting:

Side A

1. Iannis Xenakis - Herma {6:39}

2. Roger Reynolds - Fantasy for Pianist part 1 {5:18}

3. Roger Reynolds - Fantasy for Pianist part 2 {11:56}

Side B

1. Yuji Takahashi - Metatheses {5:20}

2. Earle Brown - Corroboree {10:43}

NOTE: Fantasy for Pianist was accidentally ripped into two parts; only a few seconds of silence were lost

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Music of Reynolds, Shields and Kreiger

various artists compilation - Music of Reynolds, Shields, & Kreiger

* originally posted on August 16, 2006

Roger Reynolds
"...the serpent-snapping eye" (1978)

Edwin Harkins, trumpet; Daryl Pratt, percussion; Cecil Lytle, piano; 4-channel tape part realized at CCRMA, Stanford University

"...the serpent-snapping eye" was composed for trumpet, percussion, piano, and 4-channel tape. The phrase quoted in the title comes from "The Quarterdeck" chapter of Moby Dick, where Ahab, distributing grog to the crew, draws all into a directed abandon. My intention, then, was to explore those situations in which a loss of orientation leads us more deeply into the moment itself. There is a certain aquatic feel to the music, in which the performers are joined with a complex and sonorous fabric of computer-synthesized sound.
  The work is nineteen minutes long, divided into three roughly equal sections. In the first, the primary aim of the performers is to match, submit to and intensify the taped sounds. The second, in which the synthesized sounds are sparse, introduces a feeling of independence as the performers respond, reflecting on models provided by the tape. In the final section, the live performers complement and elaborate upon - they attempt to augment - the synthesized sound.
  The structure of "...the serpent-snapping eye" is based upon various series of gradually expanding and contracting durations. In addition, the shape of each component instrumental phrase parallels one of the three models used to program the computer in synthesizing the sounds that appear on the tape. Thus, the models for the electronic sounds find a second, more flexible expression in the activities of the live performers. There is, I hope, at every level, an evident concern for matching and conformation.  (Roger Reynolds)

Alice Shields
Coyote (1981)

Tape realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

The piece Coyote is the prelude to Shaman, which is about American Indian shamanism. Coyote represents a shaman turning himself into a coyote and back to human form again. It is made from transformations of the composer's voice, coyote calls, male chorus and electronic sounds, and was made at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City. (Alice Shields)

Arthur Kreiger
Variations on a Theme by Davidovsky (1981)

Tape realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

Electronic sound is a remarkably fluid medium. One is enticed by the unlimited possibilities in instrument designs, the infinite capacity for subtle shadings in timbre, and the potential richness of musical gesture found in the sound material. Variations on a Theme by Davidovsky (1981) explores an extensive palette of electronic tones and noises. Delicately shifting colors characterize this homage to one of the classic works in the electronic field. The composition recalls the opening ten measures of Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sounds (1970) as a thematic subject. The theme appears 45 seconds into the piece "reorchestrated" for tape alone. It is preceded by a short introduction and is followed by a series of widely differing variations. Classical analog tape techniques (cutting, splicing and mixing) together with complex synthesizer patches have served in producing and shaping the variety of musical settings. The version presented on this recording is a stereo reduction of the 4-track master. the composer acknowledges the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for its generous support. (Arthur Kreiger)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Roger Reynolds - ...the serpent-snapping eye {19:29}

Side 2

2. Alice Shields - Coyote {12:33}

3. Arthur Kreiger - Variations On a Theme by Davidovsky {9:38}

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