Hospício É Deus: Eternidade 8 (eight-channel fixed media, 2011)

This work is from a series of works inspired by the writing of Brazilian author Maura Lopes Cançado, specifically her book Hospício É Deus (Diário I). The title of this book translates to “The Asylum is God.” It relates her experiences while interned at the Gustavo Riedel psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro in the years 1959 to 1960. The concept of eternity occurs as a recurring theme. Cançado writes “It is only in front of the insane that I have experienced the sensation of eternity” and “what haunts me about the insane is the distance—the insane appear eternal...eternity is insanity.” 


Hospício É Deus: Eternidade 8

A musical interpretation of the famous "Opera Game" played in 1858 at an opera house in Paris during a performance of Bellini's opera Norman.

Antyphony: Paul Morphy vs. Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard

Eric Mandat, clarinets
Timothy Ernest Johnson, guitars

Lituus

Lituus for 2 clarinets and 4 guitars

Beguine the Begin is a loose rondo built on a recurring bass refrain. The sound
and conception of organ music was an inspiration for timbral variation and 
spatialization. 


Beguine the Begin

Fortune Smiles takes as its point of departure the innocuous platitudes, ambiguous predictions, and even industrial taste of the humble fortune cookie. Fortune Smiles is a work born of fate intertwined as the fortunes of two companions are combined and sonified into a musical texture exploring new vistas of harmony and color. The piece integrates equal temperament with microtonality by using a “virtual performer” tuned entirely according to harmonic series partials up through 55. 

Fortune Smiles for flute, percussion and electronics

The quest for serenity forever fated to be interrupted is the metaphor for how Electric Meditation unfolds. The inner landscape is plagued with disturbances; the more we struggle, the more we lose our grip on the stability we so desperately desire. 

Timothy Ernest Johnson

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