i like how the two interpretations of this song--quartet vs. ensemble.  one sounds more nuanced and the other more powerful.

New Stuff

for Brass Septet
Recording of the german premiere in June 2013

Zug by Enno Poppe

Joshua Mastel: bass clarinet, piano, homemade machine
(recorded June 2021)
https://joshuamastel.com/Bass-Clarinet-and-Piano/
https://joshuamastel.bandcamp.com/track/passage

passage (bass clarinet + piano)

Shy Bather is the composer-improvisor duo endeavor of Madison Greenstone (low clarinets) and Michelle Lou (electronics).

Recorded May 23 2021 at UC San Diego by Douglas Osmun.

Mixed by Michelle Lou.

Released on Unknown Tapes 10/6/22

Shy Bather: Dream Timbre (2021). Contrabass clarinet and synthesizer/fixed media.

Il y a – memory of a word lacking

Colorists are epic poets: a slow movement 
3 violins, 3 violas, 3 celli, double bass and harpsichord | 2021
Premiered by Klasik Keyifler in Cappadocia, Turkey

Recording by Kıvılcım Konca
Mix and Mastering by Murat Çolak

Colorists are epic poets

inter-spatia (2020/22)
Catherine Lamb

performed on March 18th, 2022 at Nykirken, Bergen, Borealis Festival

Microtub (Robin Hayward, Martin Taxt, and Peder Simonsen), Rage Thormbones (Mattie Barbier and Weston Olencki), with MO Abbott and Henrik Nørstebø

tuba trio + trombone quartet

recorded by Weston Olencki

inter-spatia (with Microtub and Rage Thormbones)

Please use headphones or nice speakers with a subwoofer and keep in mind soundcloud, unfortunately, really compresses this file.

The electronics blooming from the acoustic in a symbiotic, intertwined creature like lichen.

Speaker Spit (2021-22) for large ensemble and electronics

performed by:
Clara Giner Franco, alto flute/piccolo
Isaac Roth Blumfield, objects
Miriam Paschetta, harp
Anastasia Agapova, viola
recorded live at the Grosser Saal of the Musik Akademie Basel on March 28th, 2022

like a stain only you see | for alto flute/piccolo, viola, harp, and objects (2021-22)

for cello, transducers, and sampler.
ensemble mosaik (Mathis Mayr and Ernst Surberg) live at Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin.

Gravity and Center (cello + sampler)

Schallfeld Ensemble and Pierre-André Valade at Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, Austria

(For Matt Butler, with thanks to the Nuckolls Family)

https://joshuamastel.com/Birds-fly/

Birds Fly

The Restoration of Objects [2008]
for string quartet.
JACK Quartet

More info <a href="http://www.timothy-mccormack.com/restoration" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.

The Restoration of Objects [2008] [JACK Quartet]

The Swim (1992) for organ
performed by Michael Bonaventure
recording from 'Contemporary British Organ Music Volume 1'
SFZ Music (SFZM0410)

The Swim

Prix de Composition 2012, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Dirigé par Tito Ceccherini et interpreté par l'OLC et Matteo Cesari au Karlax.

Kaala, pour grand ensemble et electronique - Karlax (2012)

Commissioned by Klangforum Wien, award for Impuls International Composition Competition 2011.
Premiered at impuls . International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music 2013, Graz / Austria, by Klangforum Wien and Enno Poppe, conductor.

Eon, for ensemble (2012)

GOD 16
Bernhard Lang
Monadologie XII 
(Klangforum Wien/Johannes Kalitzke)
www.godrec.com

GOD 16 - Bernhard Lang - Monadologie XII (Klangforum Wien/Kalitzke), excerpts

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651)
A man is a bubble, (said the Greek proverb), which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances, to this purpose; saying, that all the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations, like bubbles descending a Jove pluvio, from God and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and Providence; and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other business in the world, but to be born, that they might be able to die: others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear and give their place to others: and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion,restless and uneasy, and being crushed with a great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing that it was before.
-Jeremy Taylor

I reread Jeremy Taylor’s exquisite sentence, the opening of The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, throughout my compositional process but, in composing my work, I was not, beyond a general stormy affect in the middle section, musically illustrating Taylor’s imagery. Rather, Taylor’s rhetoric –veering between violent and delicate imagery, and structure, its pauses unable to halt a powerful trajectory, inspired me to compose this work as a type of memento mori. Giving abstract music expressive titles is rare for me, and in any case is a tricky process. But in the wake of recent losses, both personal and national, I was moved even moved by Taylor’s text –a potent emblem of the fragility and precariousness of life.

On a purely technical level, the work is a summation of my work for strings over the last decade, especially my three string quartets composed for the Arditti and JACK Quartets. More than any overdetermining system, my work is governed by the physicality of the instruments and is marked by the gradual introduction of different playing techniques: glassy harmonics, skittish string-crossings, snap pizzicato, or even brutal sawing, often resolving once more to an uneasy calm. I embrace aspects of high modernism - albeit critically, and attempt is create something viscerally expressive, dramatically structured, using pulsing rhythmic energy to veers between extremes of fragility and violence. 

While my work has used scrapping sounds for almost ten years, after watching a recent documentary on Gerhard Richter’s process, I was struck by the aural similarities created by his process which entails dragging a scrapper across the canvas over freshly-applied paint. Scrapping that yields texture and color is important in my work. The subtitle is a nod to Richter, a constant source of inspiration. 

That said, the initial juxtapositions that inspired this work are more personal. I was asked to compose a work to accompany Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings shortly after my grandfather’s passing. Its impossible for me think of either Strauss or my grandfather without thinking of Munich in the spring of 1945, the time when Strauss was finishing (and a bit too ambiguously dedicating) Metamorphosen.  Only a few miles a way, American soldiers liberated Dachau and my grandfather was among the soldiers that aided the victims and then escorted them south through Strauss’ Garmisch, to Salzburg and on to the Hungarian border. It is dedicated to him, and to my grandmother, who passed away shortly before I finished this work, in memoriam.

Review here: http://tinyurl.com/n5ua5g7 and (as performance of the year) here: http://tinyurl.com/l7ayod8

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (2012)

Albums out on Another Timbre & KAIROS:

https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/mine-but-for-its-sublimation

www.kairos-music.com/cds/0018003kai

The Restoration of Objects [2008] [JACK Quartet]

Timothy McCormack

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