Exquisite and beautiful story, Thank you for sharing

Self Desolving

syntheses for organ(s) 2022

played by Dante Boon and Eva-Maria Houben at Orgelpark at Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival 2022

organs: Sauer, Verscheuren, Molzer, and the Cabinet Organ.

commissioned by Stichting Boon en Ster

syntheses for organ(s) 30th October 2022

Venice International Performance Art Week
“UNDER SCARS” A collective performance opera
European Cultural Centre | Palazzo Mora, Venice, IT
December 17, 2022
Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh

Vocal Healing

Nyukon - The Onset of Tumescence

Ine - Voice of the Grain

Fellow seeker Andy Cowitt joins via the interwebz to conjure an 808 state.

Unreleased

BC0808

bc0808

one hundred praises in six minutes and eleven seconds. female vocals and sho.

100 praises for the 10000 things

Composed, performed, and recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard

Autumn Orisons - Cheryl E. Leonard

Invenias No. 9

On Bill’s Return From the Mountains was co-commissioned by Thingamajigs and Sacred and Profane as part of the Harrison 100 / Thingamajigs 20 project organized by Thingamajigs.

My first encounter with Lou Harrison was in July 1996 at Paddington Station in London, England. I was hoping to take a class of his at Dartington International Summer School, but I applied too late to get into his class. Lou was standing in the middle of the large station alone with a bunch of luggage at his feet. I asked him if he was Lou Harrison, and he responded “I sometimes think I am”. I was surprised how this man resembles Santa Claus –big, jolly and with a white flowing beard. He said he was looking for his partner Bill and asked if I could watch his luggage for him while he searched the station. All of a sudden I then found myself alone, guarding Lou Harrison’s luggage at my feet. 

Lou did allow me to join his Tunings of the World and Gamelan class at Dartington. Coming from a traditional musical education, it was just what I needed. Soon Lou, Bill and I became friends and they recommended that I move to the Bay Area and study at Mills College, where I would make occasional trips down to Aptos (the home of Lou and Bill) to spend our time talking about music and tunings and building instruments in the work room. 

When Rebecca and I talked about writing a new piece to celebrate Lou Harrison’s centennial, we decided that it would be most fitting to use one of Lou’s own poems. We both loved the sweet poem he wrote for his partner in life, Bill Colvig (who, incidentally is also celebrating his centennial). On Bill’s Return uses two of the unique scales from Lou’s Mass for St. Cecelia, but unlike the monophonic characters of his mass, I wanted to explore polyphony and counterpoint within these scales. 

Lou and Bill helped shape who I am and the music I write, and that chance encounter at Paddington Station is a moment that will always live with me.

On Bills Return

Bird Song uses natural phenomena of just intonation, which often have led to just intonation being ‘problematic’ and disregarded, as primary techniques. Specifically, it explores how pure stacked Pythagorean 5ths lead to comma discrepancies and subsequent acoustical beating when enharmonic equivalents are reached. It demonstrates how the beating from the comma can be used not only on a melodic level, but on a rhythmic level too. The compositional techniques are greatly inspired by La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano (Young, 1987), in which he emancipates commas by using them throughout the 5 hour long piece to characterise the work, and introduces the concept of playing in time to acoustical beating (Gann, 1993).

To achieve controlled beating, my composition uses a series of stacked pure 5ths building on F. The material begins with sine tones tuned to fundamental F giving a pure, clear sound. As the piece progresses, a sine tone of A, a third, slowly shifts frequencies, introducing the sensation of beating before settling. Then 5ths are introduced in alarming clusters. At the end of the introduction an E# is introduced, which causes acoustical beating against the F. It does this because the stacked pure 5ths cause the 12th 5th, E#, to be 23.46 cents higher than the F (Sabat, 2018, 16), a Pythagorean Comma . In equal temperament this would sound simply as an enharmonic equivalent of the same frequency, since the temperament narrows each of the 12 5ths, compromising purity but eradicating this comma. In Bird Song, this beating becomes established as a pulse, and vocalised melodic motifs begin, in time with this ‘pulse’, tuned justly to the fundamental F.

I wanted to explore ideas of organicism and nature and so the lyrics are about birdsong. According to a study by Emily Doolittle, Hermit Thrush birds tend to sing in harmonic series (Doolittle, 2014). Moreover, bird’s timbres, melodic patterns and imitation in their singing draw parallels to human music making. I feel that linking pure harmony and aspects of just intonation to birds makes the composition appear rooted in nature, and thereby more accessible. 

The style of the piece is quite theatrical, like a song and dance piece. This is due to the steady pulse of the beating, which invites synchronised movement, and could be further re-enforced with percussion like a tambourine. The notion that the pitches are tuned to a natural system and that the physics of sound determines this rhythm makes the pulse incredibly powerful, as the elements of the piece are linked strongly and organically. Further exploring the work as a theatrical spectacle, I wrote the lyrics in Italian as I feel it connects to connotations of opera, which originated in Italy. The lyrics seem to fit beautifully in the Italian language too. 

The composition also has a folky feel, with lots of similarities to Western culture ballads. This is due to the repetitive motifs and lyrics of the vocalists, the improvisatory feel of the simple melodies, the sine tone drones and fairly simple overarching harmonic schemes. Furthermore, topics of folk songs are also often rooted in nature and in portraying purity. The folk genre is associated with a sense of society but also comfort and home and integrating these connotations into the composition helps to make it accessible.

Bird Song demonstrates great potential for how musical pitch and rhythm, which often become isolated as separate elements, could be linked and developed. If just intonation is further explored and commas are emancipated, it could make performance of music much more powerful and wholesome, and responses to music could be greatly magnified because of it. Particularly in theatre and opera, dance could be linked to pitch’s natural determination of rhythm and pulse, embodying the experience of natural harmony.

Bird Song


Edward Schocker is a composer and performer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems.

On Bills Return

Edward Schocker

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