Commissioned by Perspectives of New Music:
milton babbitt memorial project.

Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris, violins.

Red Is The Rows (2011) for two violins

As I like to say, “The only thing worse than the fragmentation of poetry & music, is when we, in fragmentation, try to unite them.“ 

The inference here –– and I think most composers and poets would agree –– is that we need something radically new, a different approach, especially in what we think of as new or art music. 

To me, poetry and music are two aspects of one undivided movement, a movement which is for me very mysterious, and which I can’t even begin to define adequately, and, therefore, most of the time don’t even try.

Soundpoems are for me a way of exploring, of expressing, of sharing the natural beauty of this movement without so much thinking about it as acting out, or doing it.

The source text for this soundpoem is my “THE LITTLE CLAVIER.” The poem itself is hardly anything at all. Just a few simple phrases, a handful of images. So it does its work only very slowly. Despite its brevity, however, it does enfold an entire ARS POETICA, a way of seeing and doing poetry and music, again, as one whole. That’s its charm for me. It gives us an image of the qualitative ground of sympathetic resonance, a grandpiano-like timeless space we dare not play — for that would be just more fragmentation, just more expression of the isolated self-centered artistic ‘me.’ Instead, we listen passively, with all our energy, and reflect. This is a kind of  giving back of, as it were, as the poem has it, “the marvelous sea of chaos that surrounds us.” 

In closing, I might add here that the text is also the signature piece for my book of the same title. [See the link to the e-book below]

Special thanks to my mate, Australian New Music trombonist extraordinaire, Simone de HAAN, for adding his voice to the project. 

#iPad free friday #ebook THE LITTLE CLAVIER (631 pages b/w potos) bit.ly/dVmNKP

THE LITTLE CLAVIER, a soundpoem, featuring Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

Composer, acoustic and computer music, NYC.  Some addt'l links: vimeo.com/elizabethhoffman
clouds pattern (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iWRW1tXKVo
https://electrotheque.com/bio/hoffman_el?mode=album

Red Is The Rows (2011) for two violins

elizabeth hoffman

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