Balisong

Chew Quietly

Sirius

Snip Snip

Balisong (Concert Premiere)

Program Notes:
Oracle (2013) is a fixed-media composition exploring the relation of the human voice, a deeply personal medium, to the abstract world of electronic processing. Extremes of emotion, often "primitively" conveyed, are rapidly juxtaposed with corresponding extremes of heavily processed distortion. However, all source material is vocal, slightly complicating the simple duality of acoustic vs. electronic--the voice provides all of the piece's sound material, simultaneously laid bare and unrecognizably altered, but inescapable.
The complicated divide between natural and unnatural arose from my decision to improvise all of the vocal material. The opening shuddering breath, the piece's main motif, presented interesting motion-instability, an emotional closeness, and a path to guide each successive voice towards a larger form. I performed each track myself, referencing previous recordings; contrapuntal relations of motion and timbre between the voices resulted, forming events occurring on a linear timescale. Delaying electronic processing in order to explore the motion and intimacy of breath and other vocal sounds (moaning and screaming), made the piece itself into a negotiation of the influences it seeks to explore--heavily physical, performance-oriented production, versus an electro-acoustic treatment to effectively preserve, yet enhance and contrast with, the natural material and its intimacy.
Editing serves, therefore, to accentuate the natural, unstable motion present; volume "whittles" subtle gradations of finely-tuned, precise interruptions to disrupt the normality of the linear relations and events. Similarly, the distortion, applied in successive layers, constructs an "electronic double" of my voice, an unnatural but similarly animated sound object to mimic and conflict with the natural material, without the addition of synthesized sounds.
As varying degrees of tension are reached, an awareness of violent mood-swings between the human and electronic worlds evokes the figure of the oracle in mythology, a seer whose very being is divided between the real world and the supernatural. Hints of ritualistic chanting emerge like predictions, referencing the oracle's ability to commune with the unknown and foretell cataclysms that befall humankind.

Oracle

Soloist: David Wegehaupt

"Enkligphalin" is a word created from combining the term “enkephalin,” the hormone in the brain that mediates post-death euphoria, and the German term enklig, meaning “disgusting.” The German insertion is meant to reference the piece's underlying allusions to hunting as it is typically represented in classical music; several obvious horn calls surface throughout the piece, originally a transcription of a dying stag’s final breaths after being hunted and brought down. The new term was created to help immobilize the performer within this frantic moment of struggle shared by all animals (humans included)—a last clawing, furious, ecstatic grasp at breath and life, despite death’s inevitable imminence. 
The piece uses an audible respiration as its main motif, capitalizing on the natural sounds of physical stress that occur as the motif is elaborated upon, (mainly during inhalations.) Rather than put on a display of technical talent, the performer focuses his/her skill and stamina on conveying the emergency of simple survival, exhibiting rather than downplaying the stress it places on him/her, as occurs with the dying body. As the respirations become more and more exaggerated, the physical exertion of the performer becomes the medium for virtuosity, though the sounds produced are far from elegant, and the ugliness of the strain of the performance becomes more and more the piece’s focus. 


Enkligphalin (2011)

Whet is a fixed-media piece built on orchestrating sounds via similar gesture as well as timbre. A similar motion vector connects the gestures of splashing water, the plucking of strings, and the voice's emphasis of certain consonants. A small ensemble of violin, harp, and viola latches on to water gestures at different points to accentuate timbral relations. 

Whet

Une Oreille Pleine de Merde is an acoustic transcription of my tinnitus (ringing of the ears,) communicated with incessant, buzzing noise and piercing, persistent attacks. 

Brenna Cantwell