Very etheric and delicate, this piece reminds me of fog. Shostakovich and Feldman definately come to my mind after listening to this piece. The playinng out of the piece is rather in that the textural complexity diminishes gradually throughout until the gestures basically unite into one then soon after the piece closes with solo cello. There are some great ideas in this piece especially in regards to subtly, and Henze makes wonderful use of the strings and employes a wonderful collage of sounds.

There are some really cool sounds in this piece. I like the fluid seemless textures at the beginning, its so persistent and intense. The first three and a half minutes of the work are essentially boiling over with tension until the long awaited resolution. I really like the slow melting nature of the piece and the additive textures that seem to accumulate with a snowball type of effect. This piece definitely seems to be organized in waves, and the use of silence is very well placed as it many times retains or prolongs the tensions built. I love how this piece is constantly morphing and there is always a clear sense of direction. Gobeil makes great use of high frequencies in this work and he creates some beautiful glass-like textures with them. The frequency manipulation in the piece is very effective especially the siren-like effects that Gobeil employs throughout the piece in various ranges. The variations on the siren effect create an interesting thread within the piece and the resultant fluxuations in the texture have a curious hipnotic effect. I really like the warped feel of the orchestra sound manipulations and how they are adapted into the piece. They sound like echoes from another time in that the sounds are very distant from the rest of the piece, and they function in the piece in an out of context way in a briefer manner than most of the other sounds in the piece. Such tension, Gobeil got pretty pychological with this one.

Painting can very therapeutic.

While this piece is all in a single line, the various manipulations of the voice setup a complex ebb and flow in the line.
Dodge uses the timbre and textural variances in a way that fluxuates the sense of time, and his flow and direction with the text also help him realize this manipulation of time. I really like how Dodge mirrors and mimics the gestures in the piece, and I was really intrigued in how he derived motives out the rhythms of his text. By creating multiple voice timbres, Dodge sets up multiple layers of time and a sense of a man having a conversation with himself. The manipulations of the voice phonations are key in the majority of these effects and with this Dodge creates a good deal of contrast within a single line. The frantic varitions of the speech push the sense of time forward and Dodge creates many circular gestures out of this which really push the piece forward. I also like his placement of silence in the piece and for that matter Dodge’s dictation of the flow and direction in the piece is very well done. The manner in which Dodge builds momentum with text and expands on it with the voice sounds is very crafty and like how the text is still identifiable through the distroted voice ideas. The is a great continuity throughout the piece in regards to the shapes of his lines, and the mimicing quality between the lines strengthens this continuity. I really like what he is doing with this piece, and the variation with the ideas creates a strong thread in the piece.

Very intersting idea, but these pieces seem to be more like novelties than anything else. While it is cool to hear a Bach invention at inhuman tempos and in unusual ranges, the music lacks substance and after one or two listenings there is nothing to really gain from the music. I did like the textural distortions in the Brandenburg Concerto in that it added a new layer to the piece, but when comes down to it Bach performed through MIDI can only be so interesting, although I must comend the creativity in the manipulation and transformation of the Brandenburg as it is very much a new expression of the piece. In my opinion, Carlos should have taken more liberty in straying from the original music as there are many more possibilities that could have been explored. In fact, I think it would have been interesting if Carlos created these pieces from acoustic recordings of the works, but perhaps the technology at the time would have made the desired result quite difficult to achieve if a live recording was used. Anyhow, synthesizing two hundred year old music comes off in a very cartoony way, and I find it very hard to take the pieces seriously, but then again I don’t beleive they were meant to be. I’m interested in hearing more of these works before making a final opinion as the manipulation in the Brandenburg Concerto shows some potential for other interesting movements.

Its nice to hear an interactive work. This piece has a pretty dry fragmented sound environment and mainly composed of short durations, but this creates an excellent contrast when there are sustained notes and the long durations actually build a good ammount of tension since they are used so sparingly. The flow of the piece is very disjunct with its segmented ideas and minimal use of reverberation and decay, and there are many electronic sounds that cut off intantly with no decay at all, but despite this I still feel Babbitt creates a strong sense of pharsing especially in the way he ends his phrases. I mentioned the contrast in his use of durations and I beleive Babbitt makes great use of this polarity in his phrasing as he creates these chaotic textures and resolves them with the contrast of his longer ideas thus giving a sense of clarity to his phrasing. Many of the electronic sounds seem to be derived from synth and midi sounds, but perhaps this is just a result of his manner of manipulation in the piece. There are also a small ammount of percussive sounds, and within these few sounds nearly all are pitched despite their distortion. This is not a bad thing, in fact the piece would be different if this was not so, but I found it very interesting that a piece composed almost exclusively of pitched sounds would have such a weak sense of harmony. Of course, with the fragmented nature of the piece I guess this isn’t that surprising, and when there are moments of clear harmony they have a strong effect. The more I think about I realize that it is not so much that there is a weak sense of harmony in the piece, but rather the sound textures do not blend in a way that brings out the harmony or simply put the sounds are very seperated. I found this piece very static at first, but I warmed up to it very quickly as I began to recognize all the subtlties in his craft especially in regards to contrast. Cool interactive work, great ending.

Very atmospheric. All of the sounds in this piece seem to be coming from the same source or similar source sounds, and this coupled with the small ammount of different sound ideas that are ongoing in their nature give the piece a very elongated minimal feel even though it is a short piece. Essentially, this piece is an additive process of building one big texture and the entrie piece consists of forward momentum with the exception of the last thirty seconds or so. Also, the dynamics motions were all linear in nature which adds to the forward movement of the piece. I found the klanking and dripping sounds in the textures quite intriguing in that they were very percussive and created these sparatic rhythmic cycles that stand out in the texture. Xenakis’ manipulation is very interesting in that the sounds are on this strange border inbetween this burning and dripping texture. The piece has a large sound space and the reverberation and resonance times help creating this blur between these sounds.

This piece is strangely disorienting and very intense at times. Childerens’ voice are very powerful and I believe Stockhausen’s decision to use them is an integral part of the work. The skill in his manipulation and creation of textures is amazingly skillful. Stockhausen overlapping of multiple voice parts is very effective in creating a sense of chaos similar to crowed room with many conversations going on. There seem to be two main categories of sound types in this piece: decaying and non-decaying. In a general sense these decaying and non-decaying sounds could be defined as vocal sounds and non-vocal respectively, but this is not a strict definition. My main interest regarding these sounds is how Stockhausen establishes this contrast and effectively uses the possibilites of this to shape sections in the piece. The childerens’ voices seem to take center stage in the piece, but the non-vocal sound elements are what really drive the piece foward and bring about the most intense moments in the piece. To put it another way, I feel the vocal sounds represent more static ideas in comparison to the non-vocal sounds which are not only more dynamic in their nature, but bring about the major transitions and high points in the piece. The contrast of these two major sound types creates a very surreal and unique atmosphere to the work. I really enjoyed Stockhausen’s manipulations that created watery sound ideas and textures, and I’m extremely impressed by the fact the he did this in the mid fifties as well, because his manipulation in this area easily rival those of composers with three or four more decades of technology at their disposal. It amazes me that this piece maintains a flow and strong sense of direction in such a surreal atmosphere and sound world. Much of this flow is a result of Stockhausen’s great attention to dynamic detail and his careful placement of abrupt changes in dynamic and texture. Wonderful piece.

No one knows what the future will bring, but one can imagine. I don’t know the words that will fill these journals, but I do have an idea of what they will be like and what they will pertain to. Just as a man knows his death lies in the future yet he cannot see how or when it is to happen, I know not what I will write on these pages to come; only that I will write them.