Program Notes

The Rake by Brad Balliett and Elliot Cole


We imagine that, at the end of Stravinsky's opera, just before surrendering his sanity, Tom Rakewell experiences one burst of blinding clarity. Our Rake's Progress telescopes that moment into a half-hour lucid dream, in which kaleidoscopic Tom confronts his past selves in a torrent of words - merciless self-recrimination, apocalyptic fantasies, furious debates, twisted catechisms, cycles of sonnets and villanelles.

Composers Brad Balliett and Elliot Cole, and performer (and twin brother) Doug Balliett talk about the origin and production of The Rake:



Here's a sampling of the original electronic version:

Use the arrows to navigate between the different tracks.


Skeuomorphic Tendencies by Ryan Carter


My program notes sometimes function as a graveyard of discarded dissertation topics, and here's one half-baked idea:

When a particular technology emerges (e.g., the harpsichord), it comes bundled with a particular set of capabilities and limitations (e.g., the ease of playing many notes quickly on the harpsichord, and the lack of dynamic control over a single note). Composers find practical solutions to these limitations (e.g., octave doublings, trills, and heightened rhythmic activity in passages that ought to sound loud), and these devices become accepted as aesthetically appealing, ensuring their continued use after the original technology has been replaced or new technologies developed (e.g., similar musical solutions in the loud passages of a Haydn piano sonata, despite the instrument's dynamic control).

According to the dictionary.com app on my phone, a "skeuomorph" is "an ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques." A feature I find in my own work and that of my peers is a tendency to be interested in connections between electronic music and instrumental music, technologically distinct but, musically, increasingly related.

Skeuomorphic Tendencies is dedicated to my partner, Doug Brooks, for our tenth anniversary (during which I was editing this score).


Music Box by Marko Nikodijevic


This work was designed and realized using digital technology. The computer was used as a tool for developing, investigating and testing possible compositional scenarios. A fractal self-replicating model generates all the notes. Another algorithm generates structural models that process this endless stream of information into known syntactical models; thus echoes of Ligeti, Stravinsky and Messiaen shine through the score, but the presence of these musics is an illusion created by the computer. What we "hear" is just a random crossing of data, a butterfly-effect trick on our perception.

The title refers to this innate mechanicity of the compositional procedure - to the idea of the work as a "toolbox" of some compositional techniques relating to the music of the 20th century: a "music box", then. Also it was my attempt to somehow "get rid" of this Ligeti/Stravinsky inferiority complex.


Instantanea 6 by Remmy Canedo


"Instantanea 6" is part of the "Instantaneas" song cycle, based on the eponymous poems of the Chilean writer Renato Irarrazaval. In these poems, Irarrazaval makes a subjective verbalization of the concept of image. The result is a set of seven abstract, short texts where one can feel the personal approach expressed by the author, and where the lack of explicit meaning stimulates the imagination of the reader to provide a particular sense. This song cycle is an attempt to extend the idea of Irarrazaval. The music is driven by the intrinsic rhythm of the verses. The design of the text is expanded to define the form of the song. The poetic dimension is translated into music by altering the voice and instruments. Everybody on stage is processed in real-time with a multi-channel spatialization (no pre-recorded sounds). Everything happens in a same instant, as Irarrazaval's snapshots.