Painted Time

FOR REASONS UNKNOWN
French Horn Quartet
Matthew Lee Knowles
2025


Play once as written, then repeat, permanently removing a single note from any part
Keep repeating and removing until the 80th section contains only one note
An average performance will last 67 minutes
Each section should have a randomly chosen MM between crotchet=30 and 300
This realisation is only one of a potential 10^311 unique performances which would take 10^307 years to hear in full

In Lucky's speech in Beckett's "Waiting For Godot", the phrase 'For Reasons Unknown' is spoken ten times. 


SCORE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHdtsJGjHk

For Reasons Unknown

Marco Lucchi : synthesizer and tape

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playing with https://soundcloud.com/itwasthewires/061625001a1

Sustain - w/itwasthewires

"Hectic Day" is a fast-paced, beat-driven composition that mirrors the unending pace of a busy day. It unfolds over a steady, quick pulse as different musical elements weave in through looping arpeggios and gradually fade out, some colored with distinctive microtonal shades. In the end, all the layers vanish, but the pulse persists — a reflection of how, even when the day is over, the sense of urgency and motion lingers within.

Hectic Day

Tectonic Part 2 (2025) for Large Orchestra Nicolas Kingman

Populistens Berättelse _ Assar Tallinger

Presented at deep connections – Konzert für Kontrabassklarinette & Kontrabass
14. Juni 2025, KULTUM Graz
Collaboration with die andere saite, Graz

Am 14. Juni 2025 präsentiert das Duo deep connections – bestehend aus Johannes Feuchter (Kontrabassklarinette) und Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka (Kontrabass)

Recording: Benedikt Alphart

Fifth (2024) for contrabass clarinet and double bass

Another hypercanon piece.  

This time, from the mathematical perspective, beats get filled when their beat number equals the sum of a square, a positive cube and 6th power.  

Because the powers vary, the music keeps the counts on different instruments. 

The numbers to square get heard on the piano (with 1 the top key and then descending chromatically).

The numbers to cube get heard on pizzicato strings tuned in 19-TET, using an ascending scale that divides three octaves into 19 equal intervals which sound as nearly 10:9 rations.

The numbers to raise to the 6th power, never more than 4, map to a small gamut of tuned drums.

The complexities of the sets of sums of just two kinds of powers asserts itself as the irregular staggered entrances of the canon on the instrument associated with other power.  

If this is too much information for you, the bottom line is an intense listen which, white it has a hypersimple underlying concept, also feature a rather complex surface regardless, and because of the density of the beat numbers with a "yes" answer, intense but also unfamiliar syncopation. 

Big thank you to Peter Thoegersen, who literally wrote the book on polymicrotonal (and polytempic) music.  He's a genius and you should check out his music.  While his music and also his working methods are quite different than mine, he has opened me up to one of his great discoveries, namely that the listening mind can instinctively decouple the layers of a complex music according to the tuning systems girding each layer (at a given moment).  The effect is like passing to an experience in a higher dimension, akin to the discovery of perspective in visual art.   I'm not sure Peter would even count this as "poly" since two of the layers are 12TET and my treatment of 19TET avoids actual microintervals.  But I'd never have come to this way of projecting my ideas without his influence.

Higher Powers, for Piano, Percussion and Pizzicato Strings

The Ripples of Consequence is a composition for Babel Table, commissioned by Productions Totem Contemporain, and performed by Audréanne Filion.

This version was recorded during the general rehearsal of the concert on February 23, 2023, during the Totem Électrique concert at Espace Wilder, Montreal, CA.

The Ripples of Consequence - Générale

Improvised quartet recorded at Natural Endings Old Postal Depot (Todmorden, UK)
January 7th, 2025

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Henry McPherson (Recorders, Voice, Autoharps)
Maria Sappho (Zither, Electronics)
Raymond Macdonald (Saxophone)
Colin Frank (Percussion)

Bandcamp

taphonomy

Marco Lucchi: synthesizer and tape

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playing with
https://soundcloud.com/stan_magendanz/nodicurin

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for the current #disquiet junto challenge
https://disquiet.com/2025/07/03/disquiet-junto-project-0705-book-start/

Walden [disquiet # 0705]

I'll follow you back when SC lifts the follower limit (!)
Loving listening to everyone's music on here :-))))))))))

For Reasons Unknown

Matthew Lee Knowles

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