cirrulian ice
Ketty Nez
About this work:
Commissioned by Theodore Antoniou and his Alea III ensemble, "cirrulian ice" was written in the summer of 2006. The title is a play on the words “cerulean,” a deep sky-blue, and “cirrus,” wispy clouds formed from layers of ice crystals, found in the highest and coldest part of cloud regions.
A harmonic spectrum is altered in stages to create a progression: a stretched series shrinks in eight steps to the normal harmonic series, then once again stretches to its most extended version. These “harmonic pillars” are assigned to progressively increasing, then decreasing, durations, delimiting sections of form. Thus, the least stretched, i.e. normal harmonic series, is associated with the longest duration block in the middle of the piece, creating an overall abstractly chiastic mirror. In the middle sections, ever-increasing and decreasing tempi curves are heard as ticking clocks crazily out of kilter, speeding up or slowing down while following the same exponential curves used to create the proportions of overall durations. Musical textures flirt with references to big band and bebop, as well as an affectionate tip of the top hat to the big orchestral film sound of swirling strings. Gamelan textures are created by use of “self-similar melodies,” developed for musical use by composer Tom Johnson: larger melodic units mimic the ordering of consecutive notes. Given a pattern of a certain length, say five notes, every 5*x note is the same as the xth note.
Year composed: 2005
Duration: 00:11:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Chamber Orchestra
Instrumentation: