Ulrike Schmitz and John Guarino, Violins; Ting-Ying Chang-Chien, Viola; Mindy Asher, Violoncello; Evan Antonellis, Electronics

Recored at John C. Borden Auditorium, Manhattan School of Music

October 16, 2006

program notes:

Four/Tibetan Prayer Bowls was written between March and April of 2006. The piece stems from my obsession with inharmonic partials, as well as multi-dimensional aspects of art – not to be understood in terms of depth, but rather, the literal consideration of a larger multi-dimensional compositional field. In terms of the latter, the piece is built on the precept that a work's three-dimensional spatial features and its formal timing features should be interrelated, rather than independent of each other. The idea of developing a musical idea abstractly, then making it work in time afterwards, does not fit the syntax of this mindset. Indeed, all of the musical ideas in this piece are inseparable from the blanket of time on which they are presented. They are presented simply, absolutely, and as different viewpoints of the same object. Since in these terms, a single complex formal structure with many twists and turns is difficult to justify when one compares it to the static nature of the musical material, Four/Tibetan Prayer Bowls is a fourth-dimensionally-conceived piece about snapshots of a specific central idea that can never be viewed in its entirety. The piece consists of forty-two independent movements; some of the movements are static, and some are transformative from one simple idea to another. The piece's structure makes it difficult for the listener to consider movements in the traditional sense, and therefore forces one to consider each movement independently, without any real or implied lineage.

This piece employs the use of recorded electronic sound in addition to a string quartet. The recorded sounds are not synthesized; they are manipulations of an original recording of a Tibetan prayer bowl, a metal bowl sometimes called a singing bowl that has been used traditionally in Buddhist prayer as a means of reflection and resonance with the outside world. The partials that make up the unique sound of this object when it is struck make up the basic musical material – the idea of barely-audible overtones is also important. The inharmonic partials generated from this recording produced much of the pitch material. The use of electronics with the piece is particularly helpful in creating many of the qualities present in the source material that are often impractical for conventional instruments; these include steady gradual crescendi without peaks, suspended tones, and pitches and timbres of larger spectra; the string quartet often simulates the effects that the recording provides and vice versa.