David M. Gordon's 2020 "The Hammers That Forge Time," for Javanese gamelan, performed live by the Northern Illinois University Percussion Ensemble under the direction of Gregory Beyer.  For further details, go to www.davidmgordon.com.

The Hammers That Forge Time

David M. Gordon's 2021 "Fabular Arcana," for retuned piano and orchestra, performed live by Paul Sánchez and the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Delta David Gier. The four movements, which are performed without pause, are:

I. Hexefriri's Grand Parallactic Clockwork
II. The Coal-Bog Giantesses (starting at 8:15)
III. Concerning the Great Bøyg's Various Reconstructions of Solveig's Song from the Degraded Memories of Malevolent Woodland Spirits (starting at 18:23)
IV. Insecta ex Machina (starting at 30:36)

For further details, go to www.davidmgordon.com.

Fabular Arcana

David M. Gordon's 2023 "J'Táku Gthumá-a (after JC, LH, and HC)," for 5 percussionists, from "The (Mis)Remembered Geography of My Percussive Motherland," a cycle of 5 pieces for percussion ensembles of varying sizes. The work is performed live by the University of Delaware Percussion Ensemble under the direction of Gene Koshinski.

For further details, go to www.davidmgordon.com.

J'Táku Gthumá-a (after JC, LH, and HC)

The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORGANIZED RELIGION IN SOUND by Gary Lloyd Noland. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORGANIZED RELIGION IN SOUND

Composer Gary Lloyd Noland performs his GATEAU for piano. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

GATEAU for piano

Around 1940, Schoenberg could be heard remarking to his advanced composition students, students doubtless focused on mastering the 12-tone system, that "There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major."  

Now by the time I got to college in the 1970s, many people had come to consider the 12-tone system just as passé as C major must have seemed in 1940.   My own ear discovered pleasure in atonality from the very first exposure, but the 12-tone system always seemed an artificial and doctrinaire method for achieving atonality.  So for decades I strictly avoided it.

With this piece, I started my (often unorthodox) reconsideration of 12-tone music.  The underlying row organizes trichords that feature a minor second, always spelled (in a fashion typical of "post Webernian" music) as major 7ths or minor 9ths.   But a true practitioner would consider my row technique trivial, and I understood my approach as more an allusion or homage to a (now) antique music then a commitment to perpetuate it.

But actually, the title notwithstanding ,the rhythm holds the main interest in this piece.  The music begins with a steady pulse, but the durations gradually grow more random (and so the rhythm more syncopated), all the way till the middle of the piece.  Then, in the second half, the steady pulse gradually returns, but now by a process quite different from (the reverse of) the process operating during the first half.  

Specifically, on the first half the variance of the durations increases, but with each duration statistically independent from the previous one.  Then in the second half, the successive durations gradually grow more correlated.  

I wrote this piece for Larry Polansky; his recording (of a previous revision) appears on a Leonardo Music Journal CD.  The current revision awaits a human champion.   Where the score leaves the performer to improvise the dynamics (which Larry did spectacularly), in this MIDI file the dynamic level remains fixed and level.  

...still plenty of good music..., for guitar

11 parts of the opera. More at http://georghajdu.de/dersprung/

Der Sprung

Ich kannte sie, Herr Kollege

Fingerprints

Three pieces consisting of a post-modern yet constructivist mix of various genres and techniques, all three of them based on Blues and Boogie-Woogie. Some parts devilishly difficult, some childishly simple. The epitome of my instrumental music of the early 2000s.

Ce n'est pas un piano

Light Blue

David M. Gordon's 2018 "Consolation New," for one pianist playing two retuned pianos, performed live by Paul Sánchez. For further details, go to www.davidmgordon.com.

Consolation New

One of my early compositions written at age 23, featuring "algorithmic" music in a style somewhere between Keith Jarret's Cologne Concerto and Messiaen's Cantéyodjayâ. Performed live at a party by Phillip Vogler.

LogaRhythmen

Composer, mathematician, visual artist. 
Seeks collaboration with performers and choreographers.

Please don't spam this account!

...still plenty of good music..., for guitar

David Victor Feldman

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