Liquid Glass

for two percussionists and electronics

Program note:

My intention was to treat the instruments as everyday-world sound objects, almost completely ignoring their musical and instrumental tradition. That was easier with specific percussion instruments because of their immediate physical relationship between gesture and resulted sound. Shaping of sounds became more primitive and tactile. At many times gestural motion in two dimensions is the agent of the musical discourse. Simple gestural motion is also present in the electronic part, consisting of synthesized and pre-recorded sound layers, as movements of parameter controlling sliders and buttons.

The piece is articulated in two parts further divided into nine sections, symbolically representing the nine decans of the three astrological earth signs in the zodiac. The titles used in each section are based on the descriptions of the 9 cards of the disks suit of the minor arcana by Aleister Crowley on his Thoth Tarot.

Greek philosopher Plotinus referred to the metaphysical properties of the very physical art of building statues and shrines in ancient Egypt: ’I think, therefore, that those ancient sages who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight to the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it, and serving as a mirror to catch an image of it.’

Plotinus, Fourth Ennead: Third Tractate, Section 11

Liquid glass, section 8, score sample