|
Three Retrograde Canons These pieces were composed in the Fall of 2000, under the direction of James Hopkins. Each brief movement must be performed simultaneous to a recording of itself that has been reversed. The immense challenge during the compositional process came when I attempted to retain a sense of tonality in each movement without resorting to leaving a constant pedal tone beneath each movement. I quickly discovered, to my surprise, that many conventional tonal practices, especially suspensions and retardations, sound nearly atonal and absolutely nonsensical when reversed. Our musical ears are simply not trained to hear them in reverse. However, with some experimentation, I was able to arrive at a tonal harmonic language that is interesting both forward and backward. The performance of these three movements proved an even greater challenge. Audiences and performers alike often think of notes purely as attack points, considering the cut-off of the note only in particular instances. However, when a sound is reversed, the dynamic envelope is also reversed, meaning that the cut-off becomes the new point of articulation and the original articulation becomes the cut-off. This can have disastrous (or wonderful) effects in music with a strong pulse. If a note is cut slightly short in the original performance, then in the retrograde it will sound slightly late. For this reason, all notes in the retrograde canons had to be performed as close to their full length as possible. The score includes notation for the resultant backward parts, for cueing and analysis purposes only. These pieces were never intended to be performed by two violins and two saxophones. Moreover, they should not be considered pieces for performers and a standardized tape recording either. Ideally, each performance of these canons would involve the performers creating their own unique recording of the backward tracks. Meticulously producing the reverse tracks is as important to the performance of these pieces as playing the forward parts.
|
