New Music 6

Timestory, Book I: An Astropastoral 
for 13 soloists
1. Motuum Cælestium
2. Star 
______flies 
____________over 
__________________dark 
________________________matter

Commissioned by the Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago
The first performance was given by the Grossman Ensemble, conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, on December 3 2021

Program notes
Kids love storytime. It invites them to a completely new world in which anything can happen, even something beyond their imagination. In that world, they become new beings, which don't necessarily have to be anthropic (actually, it is very common that they become non‐human beings, e.g., frogs, rabbits, butterflies, whales, rainbow fish, unicorns, and even cars or gloves), and experience a sequence/timeline of a story deployed in a fantasied space and dimension.
While attending a storytime at a public library with my 5 years old little one, the idea came to me: writing a storytime; in this case it is not about a story unfolding on a timeline, but it is about the time unfolding in the storyline. Since music is the closest medium to the nature of time (physically, the definition of pitch is the times of oscillation in a unit time, and rhythm is the time), I wanted to write a piece about time, and invite the audience to experience being the time and join the journey of time. As I inhabited this new cosmic carnival/metaphysical amusement park, I realized that there were so many construction materials with which to design this time‐land architecture, because all music is somewhat about time, and time is the heart of music.
The first book of TIMESTORY is about stars, bells, movements, time, and their allegories, as the subtitle, An Astropastoral, suggests. The bell material builds upon my doctoral dissertation research. It uses the spectral data from the acoustical models of bell sounds and the modelling of virtual bell shapes by synthesizing engineering physics and campanology, using the Finite Element Method (FEM) technique. Note that the bell has always been the time keeper in our history, as the linguistic origin of “clock” is from the medieval Latin word “clocca,” which means bell. In this movement, there are multiple epiphanic moments when the clockwork sequence stops, and the ensemble becomes a gigantic bell/bell‐ecology. In the bell‐space there are multiple temporal and spatial layers, where various time‐beings are living and singing. The second movement is a passacaglia, which is interrupted twice by static episodes built upon a strong descending force. Here the falling stars/dying time metaphor is not about the morbid fear of death, but is about the beauty of the eternal return, the gravity of time.
The subtitle of first movement is from Newton’s book, PRINCIPIA: “Gravitas ergo non erit occulta causa motuum cælestium; siquidem ex phaenomenis ostensum est, hanc virtutem revera existere,” which can be translated as “The gravity of the cause of the motions of the celestial things, therefore, is not an occult; Indeed, the phenomenon has been shown that this force actually exists.”

TIMESTORY for 13 soloists is commissioned by the Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago and dedicated in admiration to Augusta Read Thomas. The first performance was given by the Grossman Ensemble: Tim Munro (flute), Andrew Nogal (oboe), Katherine Schoepflin Jimoh (clarinet), Taimur Sullivan (saxophone), Matthew Oliphant (horn), Greg Beyer (percussion), John Corkill (percussion), Ben Melsky (harp), Daniel Pesca (piano and synthesizer), MingHuan Xu (violin), Hanna Hurwitz (violin), Dominic Johnson (viola), and Hannah Collins (cello), conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni, at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts on December 3rd, 2021.

Timestory, Book I: An Astropastoral. I. Motuum Cælestium

Underwater Comet (2014-2015)
for string quartet
by Dongryul Lee
3rd movement, "Fractal Boundaries of Night"

Kylwiria Quartet, April 2015, Urbana, IL
Sue deNiem, violin I
Chukyung Park, violin II
Yoobin Lee, viola
Haeju Song, violoncello
Stephen Taylor, conductor

Underwater Comet picks up the place where my last piece, Psychogonia left off, which is based on the alchemical process, Axiom of Maria, a simple precept symbolizing a consecutive numerical dimension from the number 4 to 3 to 2 to 1.  I employed Jung’s article, in which he used the axiom as a metaphor for the psychological development towards individualization, yet in my piece, the One-Lapis Philosophorum is not the Jungian birth of consciousness but the longing for the perfection: Anamnesis.  For this I used the concept of cubic or higher order difference tones, a psychoacoustical phenomenon of how our mind hears a virtual fundamental tone when we hear two different pitches simultaneously.  So the entire piece is a journey from the overtones to the unfathomable (mental) fundamental, which is physically unreachable.  
The piece begins from the stage of the Two, representing the two opposite forces, Coniunctio Oppositorum, Solis et Lunae, logic and emotion, or here the Prelude and Fugue.  The prelude-logic is made up with fractals-the Cantor set is mainly handled with the features of infinite recursive self-similarities and endogenous temporal flow.  The fugue is treated traditionally-quasi intuitively, as Baroque composers did, but in cosmic or quantum levels including diminutions, augmentations, fragmentations, stretti, and so on.
The hidden fundamental, the One-Filius Philosophorum, which only our mind can imagine is hypostasized in the third movement by the asymptotic convergence towards the untouchable D (440/3 Hz) overtone series calculated by infinitely large higher order difference tones which can be projected on the psychoacoustical screen located in the deepest abyss of the human psyche.  
The title Underwater Comet is from a vision which I saw in my dream, a still gleaming azure comet underneath my foot on the frozen surface of the sea, which can be interpreted in the same way that Jung analyzed in his book, The Psychology of the Transference (Die Psychologie der Uebertragung, 1946): “The sea has closed over the king and queen, and they have gone back to the chaotic beginnings, the massa confusa. Physis has wrapped the man of light in a passionate embrace”

Underwater Comet (2014-2015) for string quartet, III Fractal Boundaries of Night

Transcendentals for 19 instruments (2015-2016)
I. ephemerals
II. organum

Illinois Modern Ensemble
Smith Recital Hall, Nov 16, 2016.

Stephen Andrew Taylor, Conductor
Elisa Moles, flute
Aaron Wilbert, oboe
Daniel Chair, clarinet
Annie Mason, bassoon
Evan Clark, alto saxophone
Carly Charles, Horn
Joel Cantoran, Trumpet
Peter Thaddeus Tijerina, trombone
Wan Noel, harp
Hana Lim, piano 1
Serena Lee, piano 2
Daniel Trent Edwards, percussion 1
Ben Van Arsdale, percussion 2
Trevor Allyn Thompson, violin 1
Janice Lee, violin 2
Yoobin Lee, viola
Nikita Annenkov, violoncello 1
Kayla M Schoeny, violoncello 2
Ehrat Zils Guilherme, contrabass

Program notes
"The mind is raised from the consideration of changeable numbers in inferior things to unchangeable numbers in unchangeable truth itself."
Saint Augustine,  De Musica, Book VI.

	The title Transcendentals is inspired by transcendental numbers in mathematics.  I encountered this fascinating concept while studying number theory at the University of Illinois.  Defined as real irrational or complex numbers which are not a root of a simple polynomial equation, transcendental numbers generate infinite series of numbers from fixed algorithms / functions; a transcendental number embraces infinite series of subordinate numbers in it.  If I permute the radix of a transcendental number, e.g., from decimal system to hexadecimal or sexagesimal system, I can get another constellation of unborn numbers within a given bound: here 15 for hexadecimal and 59 for sexagesimal.  

	Transcendentals has its genesis in Medieval organum.  Just as the vox organalis (organal voice) was added over the Cantus Firmus (vox principalis, known as the “tenor”), I created my harmonic(frequency) field progression by mapping the infinite subset of a transcendental number to the overtone series of the C. F, creating a myriad of iridescent frequency moonlets.  By adjusting the sidereal bases of transcendental numbers, I further manipulated the tonal gravity of frequency nebulae and governed the idiosyncrasy of harmonic colours and levels of consonances and dissonances in each musical tableau.

Transcendentals (2015-2016) for 19 instruments

Quasi una Macchina (2017) for 5 instruments

I. air — passepied
II. tempo giusto; quasi una macchina

The Callithumpian Consort 
Rachel Beetz, flute
David Angelo, clarinet
Gabriela Diaz, violin
Stephen Marotto, cello
Aya Yamamoto, piano
Jeffrey Means, conductor
SICPP 2018 IDITAROD Concert
Brown Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston, MA
Friday, June 23, 2018

Photo Credit: Arthur Ganson

program notes
Quasi una macchina was gradually reproduced from my previous work, parastrata, almost unconsciously and seamlessly. Thus, this piece can be regarded as a sequel or an extention of the anterior work, or a tablet which complements a diptych. The heterogeneous and automated algorithmic process which drove parastrata like a “body-without organs” consequently coerced an epiphanic direction of energy towards totally unpredicted terrain, similar to a birth of a bewitched creature without having any self-consciousness. Therefore, this sequel can be regarded as a testimony to how a simple unicellular structure can evolve to an almost “alive” musical entity through certain melo-harmonic and rhythmic experiments with repetitions, evolutions, and mutations (as of machine learning, or more precisely, a machine awakening.)

While writing this log of becoming process, I tried not to involve my consciousness but limit my role inasmuch as an administrator throughout the overall trajectory, such as closed-loop or unsupervised learning model in AI programming. Finally, in the 2rd movement, this humanoid begins to compose a new passepied, which is totally inhumane and far from commonsensical man-made artworks. The ultimate purpose of this latter part was to discover an utterly pristine musical creature; at the same time every single organ of the creature is a causatum of preceding events with a relatively simple network. While the prequel renders a genesis of waving cellular network, this two movements—sequel can be regarded as a process in which a creature created from the nexus of multi-strata is recursively creating another creature (in this case, passepied.) The fully saturated shrilling harmonies generated by FM formulae helped me to animate this android-like clangorous soundscape; a sonic facsimile of natural acoustics —twilights before the sunlight.

Quasi una Macchina (2017) for 5 instruments

Unending Rose (2017–2019) for string quartet
I. Quaerendo Invenietis

The Kairos Quartett
Stefan Häussler, violin 1
Wolfgang Bender, violin 2
Simone Heilgendorff, viola
Claudius von Wrochem, cello

Live recording from the world premiere, Oct 3, 2020, Berlin, Germany

“So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb. And the marvelous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart. 
… Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.”
Oscar Wilde, “The Nightingale and the rose,” in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888).

Program notes
Unending Rose is my modest prayer, gift and homage à Saint Mary, my own version of the Holy Rosary: a musical rose, made up with pure, pristine, and unprecedented sounds. For this I devised a program which explores unknown consonance scales and harmonies from different tuning systems. Here the word ‘consonance’ hews closer to its original meaning in counterpoint —the harmonious ratios between voices (punctus contra punctum), but expanded and developed with the help of technology. To create an artwork with this otherworldly quality, for the first movement, “Quaerendo Invenietis,” I imagined a parallel world in which music is unlike our Western art music (à la Ligeti’s imaginary childhood world, Kylwiria), and established a short musicological history of an epic age: the birth of scale, melody, harmony, and musical drama. The second movement, “The Thorn of the Sung Rose” (from To the Nightingale), is a poetic musical sculpture of concise shapes, in which the musical materials are more celestial (even higher ratios between 16 to 32) and pure (deviation values within 3 cents, 3/100 of a half step from pure ratios), since the thorn denotes not only the agony of crucifixion, but also a pathway towards love and infinity (e.g. the symbolism of Nigredo, or the love-death theme of the Nightingale in the Philomela myth, Persian fairytale, and Oscar Wilde's short story). The third, fourth, and fifth movements, “3–1. Ricercar,” “3–2. Cavatina: that the Lord will show to my dead eyes,” and “3–3. Coda: Masks, Agonies, Resurrections” respectively, form the second part of work and are completed in November 2019. The title is from Borges’s poem cycle, The Unending Rose, which gave me ceaseless inspiration. The entire piece runs about 45 minutes.

Unending Rose (2017–2019) for string quartet, I. Quaerendo Invenietis

I am a composer who seeks to write music that is both bodily and spiritual, intuitive and structured. I aim to reconcile and sublimate these tensions not through stylistic eclecticism, but through clarity of expression and depth of process. I conduct research in search of what I cannot yet imagine, so that imagination itself may move toward new terrain. Please visit my website for more details.

Underwater Comet (2014-2015) for string quartet, III Fractal Boundaries of Night

DONGRYUL LEE, Composer