The Beginning Of Weight

And a much earlier take on the idea from the last post – "harmonizing" alien musical/graphic elements...

This trio is in three very short movements with a sort of programmatic element that is actually focused on my own and the perfomers’ reactions to a few instances of superimposed notation - the performers’ role is a dramatic one, whereas mine is behind the scenes trying to “harmonize” these jumbles of music.

This is the one of the first pieces I used that sort of notation in and it is based on music from my solo piano piece Wilderness and Self-Sufficiency (Book takes the idea further but is not based on Wilderness). In The Beginning of Weight the pianist is asked to interpret this superimposed notation in relation to the meter, but is not instructed to perform the pitch material in any particular way. My hope is that different pianists will have different reactions to the illegibility.

Movses Pogosian (vln), Jean Kopperud (bass clar), Jacob Greenberg (pno). This is a recording of an informal reading, but I still think they played the hell out of the piece! MP3 and JPGs of the score below...