residual - i

Brandon Lincoln Snyder

27 views

Solo

2022

4 min.

Keyboards

Piano

Program Notes: “residual - i” is made up of individual sonorities taken from Cage's Sonatas and Interludes. Specifically, 175 of 3,738 sonorities (from the first eleven movements of the Sonatas and Interludes) were selected and grouped according to their short duration and particular spectral content. This 175-sonority-long string functions as a kind of DNA for residual - i. It runs through the piece, sometimes silently (replaced by rests), and sometimes caught in a loop (bracketed by repeat signs). The grouping was a task of computer-aided composition involving an unsupervised machine learning clustering algorithm and several parameters describing the spectral content of each sonority. I did this as a way of augmenting my own listening of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes. residual - i can be considered as a companion piece to the Sonatas and Interludes, one which considers the Cage's durational content, in addition to it's sound content. residual - i is dedicated firstly to Amy Williams, from whom I had my first live experience of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes in 2017. Secondly, this piece is also dedicated to Joe Michaels, who not only invited me into this project, but also was a source of warm welcomes and helpful advice to me when I moved to Stuttgart in 2019.
Recording Notes: Premiered May 7th 2022 Amy Williams - Piano Joe Michaels - Recording Brandon Lincoln Snyder - Mastering
Ensemble Name: Amy Williams