Inspiring music

classic

This collection of pieces for orchestra is inspired by the Mütter Museum, a medical oddities museum in Philadelphia. Each movement of Collective Uncommon contains an explicit characterization of a museum artifact expressed through a compositional genre (click individual track for full description). 

Tracks 1-5, and 7 performed by the Indiana University Concert Orchestra, David Effron, conductor, October 9, 2011, Musical Arts Center, Bloomington, Indiana
Track 6 (The Einstein Slide) performed by Alarm Will Sound at the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, July 28, 2012, Missouri Theatre, Columbia, Missouri

Indiana University Dissertation in Music Composition (2010)
Winner of the 2011 Indiana University Dean's Prize
Professional premiere at the 2012 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, Osmo Vänskä, conductor, January 6, 2012, Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Einstein Slide winner of a 2018 American Prize in Orchestral Composition

Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012 version)

Composer project - Brian Ciach

Featuring Janelle Monáe, Deep Cotton, St. Beauty, Jidenna, Roman GianArthur, and George 2.0.

Hell You Talmbout

Brian Ciach, Piano 
Recorded at the Trianon Theatre, San Jose, CA, October 5, 2015 
Recording engineers: Brian Ciach and Jay DeShan 
Mastering by Jay DeShan
https://sigh-ackmusic.org/index.html

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4R6EVzWEUA

SCORE: http://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/ciach_fourth_piano_sonata_score?workerAddress=

ABOUT THE MUSIC
This work is a "screaming motley" depicting triumph over great struggle. It is in “palindromic sonata form”, in that the sections of thematic material return in reverse order. Among other extended piano techniques, I use the Stopped-String Slide (1:50), where the fingers of one hand press strings and slide down them as they are played on the keys with the other hand, producing various harmonic overtones. Like a large, heavy iron lid frantically placed onto an over-boiling cauldron, the piano’s fall board is slammed shut, ending the final flurry of notes. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach is currently the Assistant Director and Instructor of Music (Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition) at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose, California and a Music Engraver for the Subito Music Corporation. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 


Fourth Sonata, "The Great Scream" (2015)

All variations were created from recordings of a vibrator on the piano strings. I used Logic Pro, granular synthesis, and MIDI to create the sounds.

ELECTRONIC VARIATIONS I from VARIATIONS PROMETHEAN (2019)

Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello
Hot Air New Music Festival
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Osher Salon
February 25, 2018

Copyright © 2008 by Brian Ciach

ABOUT THE MUSIC
In the beginning stages of writing the Chaconne for cello and electronic music, I recorded a large collection of cello excerpts, intending to use many of them for processing and synthesizing into an electronic accompaniment. I ended up making an entire 9-minute piece from just the tuning fifths that my cellist friend played to warm up, using none of the intended excerpts. You will hear the cellist play these fifths at the opening. The electronic music follows like an echo with an elongated and distant version. These fifths repeat over and over, like a chaconne, and are transposed and then stacked to make harmonic swirls. Harmonies of minor and major seventh chords predominate the progressions. These falling fifths also occur at different rates of speed--some very slow, some quite fast--creating canons of augmentation and diminution. In short, the entire electronic portion of the piece is a grand mensuration canon (a canon of different speeds) built from the tuning fifths at the opening (though this is not necessarily intended to be audible). The cello presents an antagonistic contrast to the harmonious electronic music. Gestures of aggression are subdued after a climax in the "golden section" of the work (at a point where the ratio is .618 in proportion to the whole), where both cello and electronics reach there loudest. The cello is left singing victoriously as the electronics drop out. I used the Riverrun and eVerb plug ins via ProTools to create the electronic music.

SCORE
https://issuu.com/brianciach/docs/bri...

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is a composer, new music pianist, and instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored" (New Music Box). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language.  He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is the Assistant Director and Instructor of Piano, Piano Improvisation, Music Theory, and Composition at the Hunter School of Music (San Jose, California). His compositions are published by Potenza Music and nomus21. 

WEBSITE
https://sigh-ackmusic.org

Chaconne for cello and electronic music | Nicholas Denton-Protsack, cello

The Mütter museum contains a host of specimens in jars (Grover Cleveland’s tumor, slices of a head, etc.), skeletons (the tallest one in the world next to the shortest), calcified fetuses, and models of disorders donated by various medical doctors hoping to inspire research into cures for the various odd afflictions. One particular model sticks out: 

“This model is believed to represent an individual known as Madame Dimanche, or Widow Sunday, who lived in Paris around the beginning of the 19th century. According to one account she had in her 24th year exostoses and excresence or horn on different parts of her body; the excresence or horn which she had on the middle of her forehead attained a length of 10 inches toward her 80th year. She was operated upon at Paris by Dr. Souberbeille, and lived about seven years after the operation, by which she was quite cured. The original horn is said to be preserved in the Museum Dupuytren, Paris.”—The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians

The Human Horn Growing out of the Forehead of Madame Dimanche is a study on a unison. The violas open the movement with the unison along with buzzing kazoos in the percussion section. As the rest of the strings enter with “The Bending of the Horn,” a glissando, this unison expands in range and crescendos into a full orchestral outburst. A sad melody, “The Widow Sunday,” is heard in the woodwinds and horns above a piano obbligato. The movement ends with three overlapping slide whistles (“The Bending of the Horn”) and a dark sonority growing out of the unison in the brass and lower woodwinds. 


III. The Human Horn Growing out of the Forehead of Madame Dimanche (Study on a Unison)

“Dr. Formad recently exhibited a very unique specimen before the College of Physicians, Philadelphia. The specimen is an enormously developed colon. The patient from whom the specimen was taken was a man 29 years of age who had been found dead in a water closet, and thus became the subject of coronatorial investigation. At 16 he would go as long as a month at a time without a movement of the bowels. At 20 years of age he was exhibited in a dime museum as the “Wind Bag” or “Balloon Man.” Lately, he had abdominal pain, tympanites, and shortness of breath. At the autopsy the colon was found to be 8 feet, 4 inches long, and its circumferential measurement [up to] 30 inches. The colon contained about 2-and-a-half pailfuls of feces, which weighed about forty pounds. Dr. Formad regards the case, not as one of ordinary dilation from retention of feces, but an actual overgrowth of the colon.”–The Journal of the American Medical Association (1892) 
“Today, this condition would probably be diagnosed as Congenital Aganglionic Megacolon or Hirschsprung’s Disease. This happens when the nerve supply to the portion of the colon fails to develop, leading to functional obstruction and colonic dilatation in front of the affected segment. Hirschsprung’s Disease occurs in approximately 1 out of 5,000-8,000 live births and predominates in males 1:4. Treatment may involve a surgical resection of the affected portion of the bowel.”—The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians 

In creating the music for the Megacolon, I tried to be as explicit as possible. Amplified ripped-open cabbages, stirred macaroni and cheese, a cow moo can, and a Lion’s roar, contribute to a large orchestral round on a long-winded musical subject evoking an intestinal track. The subject begins in the extreme low register of the basses (tuned down) and works its way up through the orchestra—faster and faster—to the high woodwinds and piccolo. I enjoyed working with the idea of presenting a serious compositional genre, the mensuration canon (a canon of different speeds), with a comical subject.


I. Megacolon (Mensuration Canon)

The second study, The Progressive Ossification of Harry Eastlack, is a set of variations on a descending bass in three progressively slower sections. Harry’s disorder, Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, or FOP, is “a rare and poorly understood disease in which the bone repair mechanism runs out of control, turning other tissue like muscles and tendons into bone” (Wikipedia). Each section of the movement attempts to reflect this progressively immobilizing disorder: “The Truncated Life” suddenly stops short, reflecting the end of mobility; “The Oppression” repeats two stubborn and somber notes in the clarinet (as the bass line falls, the texture of this static melody thickens); the next section, “The Liberation of Death”, releases the oppressive immobility in an enlightened and lyrical free section. 

II. The Progressive Ossification of Harry Eastlack (Variations on a Descending Bass)

“Chang and Eng were the original ‘Siamese Twins’ (although they were three-quarters Chinese). The term is now popularly used for conjoined twins. They died on January 17, 1874, in Mount Airy, NC, where they had settled as farmers after spending much of their lives on exhibition tours. They married sisters and raised a total of 21 children; one was the father of 10 children, the other of 11. They maintained separate households on separate farms, taking turns in spending a week at each house where one would be complete master during the period at his own place. 

“A commission of doctors from Philadelphia went to Mount Airy to get permission from the families to make an examination of the twins so as to determine the exact nature of the anatomical connection and settle the question of whether or not they could have been separated during life. The doctors were allowed to transport the bodies to the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, where the actual autopsy was done in the Mütter Museum. “…The band was principally composed of skin and cartilage. Portions of the peritoneal cavities of each twin protruded partly into the band, and their livers were joined by a thin strip of liver tissue. Those joined livers are on display in the museum.
“In life, their usual position was standing side-by-side with an arm over each others’ shoulder. …Chang’s body made the greater accommodation to that position, having developed a definite curvature of the spine. The brothers were also temperamentally quite different. Chang was a heavy drinker with a bad temper, while Eng was placid and easy-going.” —The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians    

I created two distinct rhythmic profiles in Dance of the Siamese Twins: Chang and Eng Bunker to reflect the temperamental conflict between them. The first is a simple, two-note grouping (“The Placid Eng”) and the second is a more aggressive, sharp rhythm (“The Tempestuous Chang”). It was my aim to evoke the wobbling, awkward stride of the conjoined twins through this polyrhythmic blending. 


V. Dance of the Siamese Twins: Chang and Eng Bunker (Polyrhythmic Study)

The Screaming Soap Lady is at the center of the seven movements. Not only is it in the palindromic position of the entire piece, but it is also itself a palindrome. The Soap Lady gets her name from a process known as adipocere, where under certain soil conditions body fat turns to soap, preserving the body. Musically, this is captured as the timpani solo undergoes a character transformation from “The Fat” (normal, loud strokes) to “The Soap” (notes played on the shells of the timpani—a metallic, feeble effect). “The Soil,” a dark and static inner palindrome in the lower woodwinds and brass, causes this transformation. “The Scream” is a tutti orchestral texture that bookends the movement. It is a representation of my emotional response when first seeing this frightening woman, who’s jaw is wide open as if she is fixated in a perpetual scream. 

IV. The Screaming Soap Lady (Palindrome)

Performed by Brian Ciach, The Hunter School of Music, San Jose, CA, October 16, 2018.

Prometheus Unbound

Performed by Alarm Will Sound at the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival 
Missouri Theatre Centre for the Arts, Columbia Missouri

The Einstein Slide (2012)
Addendum to Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2010)

The Einstein Slide is a short chamber concerto inspired by a medical slide of Albert Einstein's brain on display at the Mütter museum, a medical oddities museum in Philadelphia. 
	Lucy Rorke-Adams, the neuropathologist who donated the slides to the museum, has found that Einstein's brain is remarkably youthful for a man aged 76. "The blood vessels are gorgeous", she says. To reflect this, the music is ever inspired and brilliant, undergoing constant shifts and a childlike exploration of material. Scientists have found that Einstein's brain was lacking a complete Sylvian fissure, a type of wall separating the parts of the brain responsible for mathematical ability, spatial reasoning and three-dimensional visualization. Some argue that the synergy of these diverse segments in Einstein's brain allowed him to think differently. The Einstein Slide evokes this, musically, by way of constant shifting between sections. 
	There is also the "musical equation" toward the middle of the score. This is a musical representation of the formula E=mc2 in the form of a puzzle canon. Overall, the key areas of the work are C and C-sharp, reflecting, in a musical way, the c squared notion of the famous equation.


VI. The Einstein Slide (Chamber Concerto)

Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language. He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is a Lecturer of Music Theory and Composition at San Jose State University and Assistant Director and Instructor of Music at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 

      In 2011, Brian earned a doctorate in music composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he also studied music theory and electronic music. He was the recipient of two Dean's Prizes in music composition at IU in 2009 and 2010 for Mölna Elegy and his orchestral dissertation, Collective Uncommon. He also received the Presser Music Award at IU in 2008, which funded travel to the premieres of two of his compositions in Berlin, Germany and Pavia, Italy. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at Indiana University. Additional studies were with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin in the summers of 2008 and 2009.  Brian studied privately with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Richard Wernick from 2004 to 2006. Ciach has two concurrent Master's degrees in piano performance and composition and a Bachelor's degree in piano performance from Temple University, where he studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, Harvey Wedeen, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and composition with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead. 

For more information, please visit: sigh-ackmusic.org

EDUCATION: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (DM, Composition, 2007-2011), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (MM, Piano Performance, MM, Composition, 2002-2004), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (BM, Piano Performance, 1998-2002), Delaware County Community College (AA, Liberal Arts, 1995-1998)

EMPLOYMENT: Instructor of Music Theory, Santa Clara University, Assistant Director, Instructor of Music (piano, improvisation, music theory, and composition), The Hunter School of Music, Music Engraver at the Subito Music Corporation

INTERESTS: cooking, chess, biking, running, swimming