These decorated fragments of time: an original composition for Pierrot ensemble and electronics

Abstract

These Decorated Fragments of Time is an eight-movement work for Pierrot ensemble, subsets of the Pierrot ensemble, and electronics. This thirty-minute composition draws upon the timbral and sonic possibilities of Pierrot ensemble with electronics. The interwoven motives and timbres shared between the instruments and electronics help generate formal decisions and compositional elements. The piece is a modular work in which the first, third, fifth, and seventh movements comprised solely of fixed audio may be combined into a stand-alone composition. The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth movements, for instruments and electronics, may also be combined into a separate work, and each movement from the entire composition may be extracted and performed as an individual piece. Although other works have been composed for soprano, flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, cello, percussion (marimba, gong, tam- tam, orchestral bass drum, triangle), piano, and electronics. To my knowledge this is the only work for this particular combination that is constructed in a modular fashion. The accompanying document discusses the relevant literature, history, harmonic/rhythmic implications, and compositional techniques that inform my composition. I have also included an overall formal analysis, in which I show how the form of the work crystalizes through the development of its musical materials. The text, which is sung and spoken, is delineated partly from the title the work; the remaining text is inspired by my personal musings on the abstraction of time in music. This document also provides information on the computer programming aspects of the composition, and explains how I constructed “patches” to extend the possibilities of the instruments through the software program Max (7.3.5).