The Counterfeit Reality
Michael Wittgraf
About this work:
The Counterfeit Reality (1998; approximately 12 minutes in length) is a musical manifestation of the world as portrayed by the news media. The media projects a distorted image of events and situations, inflating the importance of some while diminishing that of others. It presents this picture as an accurate representation of our world, when in fact it creates a counterfeit reality. Entire personalities are constructed from single sentence quotations. Persons are judged, tried, and convicted before an arrest has been made. Every conflict has a protagonist and an antagonist. Polls are taken and the opinions of an entire nation are reduced to the answers to a few simplistic questions. Essential information is replaced by sensational information. “Newsworthy” means “profitable”.
The music of The Counterfeit Reality is composed of a few basic, essential ideas that are emphasized to varying degrees and applied to different elements of sound as the work progresses. Exerpts that sound similar may be based on entirely different information. Sections that are wildly different to the ear may in fact be based on identical musical ideas. The actual significance of each basic musical “fact” cannot be ascertained until all of the music has been presented, just as one cannot determine the true circumstances of a newsmaking situation until all facts have been reported, which, of course, rarely occurs.
Year composed: 1998
Duration: 00:11:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Percussion Ensembles
Instrumentation: 5 Percussion (General)
Instrumentation notes: 2 snare drums, 1 bass drum, 1 kick drum, 6 tom-toms, 5 roto-toms, 2 timpani, 2 timbales, 1 woodblock, 2 brake drums, 3 cowbells, 2 flexatones, 1 iron pipe, 1 referee’s whistle, 1 vibraslap, 9 cymbals, 1 tamtam, 1 marimba, 1 bass (five-octave) marimba, 2 xylophones, 1 vibraphone, 1 set of chimes, 1 Glockenspiel,
and 1 set of crotales