Ripple Cycles (2015)
Instrumentation: string quartet
Duration: 8 minutes
Duration: 8 minutes
Program Note:
The more I compose, the more I feel composing becomes an act of blending scientific and imaginative thinking. In Ripple Cycles, both modes of thinking equally important. This appears especially in the unfolding of its form. Form is established by a series of compressions and expansions. Sections of music become shorter, active, denser and more layered, and then gradually regress to sparser, transparent states. But form is also established by emotional trajectories. Moments of gentle timelessness turn into moments of anxious frenzy. Feelings of playfulness turn into agony, agitation, and uneasiness. The title itself is specifically two part.
Ripples are my own imaginations of harmony, timbre, and dynamics interacting like ripples in the surface of a body of water, while cycles describes the cyclic, mathematical treatment of time in the composition.
The more I compose, the more I feel composing becomes an act of blending scientific and imaginative thinking. In Ripple Cycles, both modes of thinking equally important. This appears especially in the unfolding of its form. Form is established by a series of compressions and expansions. Sections of music become shorter, active, denser and more layered, and then gradually regress to sparser, transparent states. But form is also established by emotional trajectories. Moments of gentle timelessness turn into moments of anxious frenzy. Feelings of playfulness turn into agony, agitation, and uneasiness. The title itself is specifically two part.
Ripples are my own imaginations of harmony, timbre, and dynamics interacting like ripples in the surface of a body of water, while cycles describes the cyclic, mathematical treatment of time in the composition.