Low time patterns [#1-5] for 7 players (mixed ensemble)

Details:
low time patterns [#1-5] is scored for a chamber ensemble of bass flute, cor anglais, bass clarinet, percussion, violin, viola, cello.
It has received four international performances, including Ensemble Recherche, Freiburg, Germany; Ensemble Antipodes,
ISCM World Music Days, Lucerne, Switzerland; Klangforum Wien,Vienna, Austria; and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3
Hear and Now.

Context:
The research questions addressed in this piece are concerned with the exploration of musical time and, in particular, the notions
of a ‘linear’ and ‘vertical’ time as described in Jonathan D. Kramer’s book, The Time of Music – New Meanings, New
Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New York, 1988). The piece explores the dichotomy of a non-teleological versus
teleological approach to musical perception by presenting the same material in, essentially, two different ways: movements II
and IV utilise a more linear approach to musical time through the use of circular structures derived from contiguous note series
travelling through an entire octave (outwardly projected motion), while movements I, III and V work within the confines of a
speculative time-space in which stasis is created through the through the employment of a more limited choice of pitches
(inwardly projected motion). Each movement is presented as a densely textural aggregate mass from which further
manipulations of musical time are created by altering the levels of compression or attenuation of musical material from one
moment to the next.

The principles of ‘inwardly projected motion’ and ‘outwardly projected motion’ are described in more detail in the composer’s
PhD thesis Cyclical Structures and the Organisation of Time (University of Huddersfield, 2007), while the opposition of static and
mobile structures has been explored musically in much of the composer’s subsequent compositional output since 2002.

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