Using only sounds from cicadas that come every 17 years

Neon Scenes (excerpt)

1942 was a pivotal year for Harry Partch. After more than a decade of obscure but steadfast devotion to his unique musical vision, his bold move from the idyllic isolation of California’s Big Sur to the busy streets of Chicago brought him new recognition, putting him before a series of audiences across the Northeast. Those performances were the springboard that soon catapulted him onto the stage of Carnegie Hall, the pages of the New York Times, and eventually secured his place in the pantheon of great 20th Century composers.
Luckily, one presentation of his radically new “Speech Music” was recorded at the Eastman School of Music. These long lost direct-to-disc recordings reveal not only a charismatic lecturer but also a powerful performer, able to transform his arcane theories into captivating music. These are the earliest recordings of this unforgettable repertoire—including Partch’s only solo recording of his famed hitchhiker saga Barstow—captured in stunningly intimate detail. The Grammy winning author & producer traces the composer's arduous steps, aided by facsimiles of his letters, scores, and rare photographs, revealing Partch's tenacious wit, dark sense of humor, and above all, his unfailing creative genius.

1 True Vs. Tempered

longing is an aviary (2023) for orchestra
 
This work draws its title from Ross Gay’s poem “Because,” which depicts longing with an evocative catalogue of images which are quivering, luminous, and full of motion. I explore this same trembling effect in a series of tightly controlled, virtuosic dances for orchestra which spiral outwards from a single pitch. This music is driven by a kaleidoscopic sense of color, a process of refracting and unwinding, and a momentum which eventually builds into a frenzied, shimmering aviary of birds. longing is an aviary was written for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, conducted by Tim Weiss in Spring 2023.

Performed April 2023 by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and conductor Tim Weiss, Symphony Center, Chicago, IL. Mixed and mastered by Marc Alletag.

Special thanks to Jonathan McCormick and Anna Thompson

Image: 'Aviary' by Annie Davidson

longing is an aviary (2023) for orchestra

Misterioso, Excerpt from
On a winter's night a traveller [The Deeply Learned Clavier] for solo piano
Ariel Mo, Piano
Brown Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston MA
April 2024

Program notes:
As evident from my website, I have recently replaced numerous pictures on the homepage with artificially synthesized images using a Deep Learning application. Nearly half of the images featured here have been generated by the “discord.” The rapid evolution of AI and Deep Learning algorithms is truly remarkable, and artists in the 21st century might find themselves in competition with AI-driven creations. Rather than compete with the technology, I find pleasure in embracing machines as collaborative creative partners.

In 2022, I embarked on a new phase of my research on Computer Music, in the field of Artificial Intelligence. To delve into this field, I studied MIT OCW’s Deep Learning course—a decision mirroring my choice back in 2010 when I studied differential equations, a significant contribution to my DMA research on virtual bells. For this, I began studying Python programming languages and exploring codes on the Google Colab platform. For over two months, I played with neural network codes, allowing the computer to learn circa 110 piano compositions written by Mozart. Following each learning process, which lasted between one and six hours (approximately 20 to 200 epochs—deep learning sequences), the computer generated fresh piano compositions within its comprehension of Mozart's musical context. Essentially, the computer composed pastiche pieces reminiscent of Mozart's style or aimed to counterfeit Mozart's works at its best.

Due to the limitations of my access to the Google Colab platform and the constraints of session timeouts, I was constrained to a maximum of six hours for each deep-learning process, despite the fact that these processes typically demand significantly longer durations, often ranging from several days to weeks and months. Additionally, the available volume of model data-works proved insufficient for generating authentic Mozart-esque piano work, e.g., having Alberti basslines or crisp and concise phrase models which we can easily find in his oeuvre. Nonetheless, the outputs/works compiled by the computer implied various intriguing features that we can often find in the tonal music repertoire, including the presence of ambiguous tonalities that bridged different keys and modal mixture, diatonic scales and modes, repetitions, various patterns of chords and arpeggios, oftentimes realized in awkward, crude and rudimentary, or even anti-contrapuntal, artificial(of course) and mechanistic ways, in distorted and grotesque shapes.

For about a month I listened to these outputs, and began tracing the trajectories of the computer’s unfulfilled thoughts. I was almost an archeologist who discovered a pile of unfinished, improvisatory, spurious sketches written by an unknown composer. During the discovery process, I tried to reveal the computer’s intentions, develop his/her/their imagination, and transform and elevate it into my own artwork.

It is commissioned by and dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Ariel Mo, who beautifully world-premiered my Le Tombeau de Harvey in January 2022.

Excerpt from On a winter's night a traveller for solo piano: Misterioso

“More than 20 years ago, the music critic John Rockwell described Ben Johnston in the New York Times as “one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer.” What has changed is that Johnston is now, I’d suggest, our BEST non-famous composer.” – Mark Swed, LA Times
In this exquisite chamber music recital, Ben Johnston sets the provocative texts of Rumi [the medieval mystic Sufi poet] in the pure tunings & modes of the Middle East. While THE TAVERN tells of an initiate, intoxicated with the possibilities of a new spiritual life, PARABLE offers a delightful story about a Mouse & a Frog. Rumi uses the time-honored technique of teaching by example, using the relationship between these two tiny creatures, one of the land and the other of the water, to reveal truths about the human experience.
REVISED STANDARDS – Inspired by the midcentury songbook of Billie Holiday, Johnston tells us, “In jazz improvisation, the soloist has very great freedom to play with intonation…In my just-tuned jazz, spontaneity is disciplined in a new way so that all players are creating both melodic and harmonic microtonal innovation that can vary greatly in how it affects the listener, but always innovates in both melody and harmony.”
All of these premiere recordings are performed in Just Intonation.
“Stunning” — LA Times

Ben Johnston - The Tavern | A Children's Game

Ben Johnston - The Tavern | Community Of The Spirit

Ben Johnston - The Tavern | Who Says Words With My Mouth

Ben Johnston - The Tavern | Prelude

Misprints is influenced by the third cantos from a novel written by Nabokov called Pale Fire, a literary work that is part poetry and part prose.  In the third cantos, the character John Shade has a near death experience and sees a “tall white fountain.” He later reads in a magazine about a woman who came close to death, also claiming to have seen a “tall white fountain,” but soon comes to discover that the woman’s account in the magazine was a misprint, learning that in actuality the woman saw a “tall white mountain.” 

If a question is translated into a different language, words sometimes are misprinted and change meaning, yet the question still retains the understanding that it is a question. Therefore, if a Bach cello suite is played on viola, does it still ascribe to the same meaning?  This implies that rather than text (sound source), just like the words mountain and fountain, texture (sound qualities) plays more of a significance.  

This piece is conceived using string sounds to emulate the different worlds of poem and prose.  In Misprints, I attempt to sonically resemble the contrast between poetic and prose structures in terms of having music material phrased as a pseudo-poem that resolves as well as abruptly changes to different environments, versus music material phrased as proses, which sonically resemble a continuous flow of iterations.  The iterations of string sounds become less apparent to their sources and dissolve into a texture of gestalt spaces.  As the piece progresses, the flow is interrupted by a constant change of different sound environments with delayed reverbs imitating sounds of the cinema, in which case the cinema is a misprint of reality.  Both poem and prose become “textures interlinked” to develop a “web of senses.”

Misprints

performed by Robin Meiksins (Summer 2018)

Transcription/ Microwave Popcorn was composed for flautist Robin Meiskins for the occasion of a University of Illinois Group for New Music event. The first incarnation of this work was premiered by Meiskins on 1/20/18 in Urbana Illinois at the culminating concert of this event. This is a revised version of the work.

	Microwave Popcorn, as the title suggests, involves the  transcription (in this case, mostly rhythms/ durations - converted to pitch frequencies via reciprocal of those durations as wavelengths) of popcorn popping in a microwave. The musical structure of this process is fairly straightforward and to me, the aural image is associated with joy and anticipation. I have been interested for some time in instrumental re-synthesis and computer-assisted transcription as part of an algorithmic compositional approach. The unique opportunity and circumstance for which this piece was originally composed provided an opportunity to do this kind of musical ‘still’-life.

Microwave Popcorn (for flute solo)

For an earlier work, I recorded microwave popcorn popping as a transcription source for a work for flute. This current piece explores that original recording as its source material with a focus on aural ‘imagery,’ hence, MicrowaveTelevision. The former work was more about psychological associations, complexity, and translation/transcription. Here it is possibly a commentary on consumerism and what is sold as progress. It might be about the nature of entertainment, the interfacing of technology and culture, and how it connects to our humanity, though it also evokes screens, radiation, and industrial waste.

Microwave Television (stereo fixed-media)

I try to write music that is oriented around acoustical phenomena and virtuosic classical performance practice. Please visit my website for more details.

Excerpt from On a winter's night a traveller for solo piano: Misterioso

DONGRYUL LEE, Composer

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