piano piece 2

Gordon Downie

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1995

9 min.

Piano

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Program Notes: Commentary: The notational and temporal data-structural representations utilised in piano piece 2 have essentially two functions. The first, technical-aesthetic, seeks to extend and build upon those technical researches initiated most prominently in integral serialism and associated practices: in particular, the extension and application of temporal fractionization to meter. The second, aesthetic-critical, seeks to embed within the notational fabric a resistance to reification. The consequent problematisation of the medium that is a product of these two processes represents the space of interaction where the two functions merge. Technical-aesthetic: In addition to the fractionization of time point allocation and duration, piano piece 2 employs fractional meter which generates opportunities for impulse tiling, where the entry points of primary note values are fractionally staggered, and durational migration, which de-couples impulse location from impulse duration. The notation in piano piece 2 functions to emphasize the hyper-autonomy of the individual note or time point. This is achieved by re-specifying the parametric profile of each successive impulse in terms which include pitch, duration, temporal location, intensity, and register. This process of parametric de-coupling [see below] frustrates both the performer’s and listener’s attempts to extract from the music’s surface shapes or sensory units that are superordinate to the individual note. By concentrating upon the singularity, the notation functions to resist the formation of a permanent work identity. Aesthetic-critical: This process functions to subvert and disable processes of reification. Reification is a concept that elaborates the Marxist theory of alienation. In the case of reification, concrete or conceptual phenomena are regulated and transformed to ease their precise quantifiability and measurement. This process aids their repeatability and management, two features that are essential characteristics of any successful commodity. Reification then, is a process of commodification. piano piece 2 disables this process by embedding within the notational fabric high levels of multivalency or notational dissidence. Fully univalent notation assists processes of assimilation as it exhibits easily verifiable metrics of measure and calculation. Thus, any object seeking unhindered passage through commodity society must exhibit those characteristics which enable ownership through ease of comprehension, assimilation, calculability, and repeatability. Objects seeking to counter these processes must, therefore, confront and disrupt them. Multivalent notation, characteristic of much advanced and critical music output since 1945,and developed in piano piece 2, offers significant levels of resistance to processes of reification, by exhibiting levels of cognitive, operational, and perceptual complexity, characteristics which hinder unreflective performance and response. By problematizing the medium in this way the medium itself loses its customary transparency. In such circumstances the medium is foregrounded, acting as a barrier to processes of reification and appropriation. Parametric de-coupling Parametric de-coupling emphasizes the organizational and structural independence of parameters in opposition to their customary interdependency and subordination to the exigency of context. Such contexts have a regulatory, synectic function, to secure and maintain subject homeostasis, and may be affective or neuro-physiological (determining the subject’s internal, affective disposition), physiological (determining or affecting the subject’s internal, physical constancy), psycho-motor (determining the subject’s physical response to mental or internal representations), chrono-biological (determining the subject’s internal temporal control and feedback mechanisms), or chrono-environmental (determining the subject’s representation of experiential temporal phenomena and input). In consequence, such contexts significantly delimit the repertoire of signifiers capable of attachment to any given utterance or percept. As any given utterance is a syncretism of otherwise distinct parameters, it is upon the regulation and subordination of these that context building, affirmation, and maintenance are reliant. In consequence, contexts (operating singly or multiply, sequentially or coextensively) are maintained by enforcing varying degrees of parametric interdependency, in which 1...n parameters may dominate. The smaller is n, the more clearly demarcated are the situational semantics of any given context. Parametric coupling or parallelism is thus a determination of the extent to which parameters are functionally dependent and engaged in processes of context support and affirmation. Context negation, on the other hand, is achieved through the independent organization and determination of distinct parametric levels and classes, whereby, through the application of parametric equivalence (in which no parameter is subordinate to any other), heterarchical structuring replaces hierarchical structuring. Via independent or semi-independent organization, parameters are, in consequence, dissociated or de-coupled from one another and exhibit varying levels of self-determination and autonomy, autonomy in conflict with those conditions necessary for unambiguous context formation and for the maintenance of stable signifiers and referents. © Gordon Downie, 1998, 2006, 2018
Recording Notes: Commissioned by Saarländischer Rundfunk and premiered by Bernhard Wambach at Musik in 20 Jahrhundert, Saarbrücken, Germany, May 1997. The work was subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio Three’s Hear and Now by Ian Pace, May 2001, and was given its London, UK premiere in April 2006 at The Warehouse.
Ensemble Name: Ian Pace