At the speed of light

Posted on November 7, 2011 by composerinthegarden

The speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds. Einstein

Tonight the air is crisp and cold and the sky is bright with winter stars and a growing half moon. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper float over the roof of the house and Orion the Hunter is rising in the southern sky.

The “more than half” moon is bright enough to cast shadows across the dark tangle of the garden and thread between the almost leafless trees. The four seasons seem an inadequate description for the ongoing flow of changes that I notice in the garden; it morphs from moment to moment each time I step outside. As I set up my camera for a long exposure, I think of a card that a friend sent describing the thirteen moons of the native American tribes. What is this moon tonight? Harvest is over and winter will arrive soon; perhaps this is a liminal moon, a threshold between the season that has ended and the one yet to arrive.

The lyrics and melody to “Light” (See blog post Fire and Light) run through my head and keep me out in the cold night gazing up at the sky. “Gathered on the waters, reflected by the moon, even once removed, its power streams into the night. Light . . .” The piece is being premiered in ten days and I am preparing the visual media that is part of the performance. Solar flares, clouds across the moon and the water, light sifting through trees and clouds – the images and the music are inextricably intertwined and indeed, this piece was born from nights spent just like this, in the quiet of the garden filled with light.

Here is a sneak preview of part of the piece, with a MIDI soundtrack sans sung lyrics. The lyrics to the clip shown above:

Light, Light, Light. . .
Gathered on the waters,
reflected by the moon.
Even once removed, its power
streams into the night,
Light, Light, Light . . .

October Reprise

Posted on October 24, 2011 by composerinthegarden

“. . . the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Mark Twain

It is late October and copious rainfall, mild temperatures, and a few sunny days have conspired to keep the garden green, glowing, and full of flowers. I expected the garden to be withered with frost by now, an eerily beautiful place of spent flowers, blackened leaves, and winter weeds. I had planned for it, in fact, complete with a melancholy video to document the season’s end. But when I went to record the demise of the garden with my cameras, I couldn’t find enough source material to make my point. Still attached to this idea, my expectations got in the way of my observations and I felt frustrated and stuck. Expecting an end, I found a reprise instead.

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A musical reprise is a repetition of an earlier theme or song with some changes that reflect the development of the narrative line. The October garden certainly is in the middle of its reprise. The end of the season is near; perhaps in days, a hard frost will claim its due. But for the moment, the garden is repeating its performance of roses, zinnias, salvias, and ageratum amongst the autumn theme of goldenrod, asters, and grasses. Plants are tall, blooms are colorful and fresh, and everything is swaying in the gusts of wind that leap up from nowhere, showering the beds with a flurry of colorful leaves. A final flourish that has challenged my expectations and reminded me to pay attention to, and appreciate, the unanticipated beauty that is before me.

Building a Web Site in WordPress

Posted on October 17, 2011 by composerinthegarden

My blog seemed to be driving traffic to my music website, but hey! that thing hadn’t been updated in years! Now that others were looking and listening, a web renewal seemed in order and I decided to experiment creating a website rather than a blog in WordPress. Could it be done? I was becoming comfortable with the WordPress interface and felt that more could be explored with the TwentyEleven theme without going to a custom design or self-hosted site. Just as I decided that I still wasn’t happy with the theme fonts and some of the other limitations, WordPress offered a bargain deal that included customizable fonts, domain mapping, audio player, etc. I took a deep breath, finished updating the audio and image files, and plunged into new waters with lynnpurse.com.

The hardest part wasn’t the technical aspect of creating new header images, tweaking audio, etc. The hardest part was redefining my online identity. It took me longer to write my “about” page than anything else – I am a different person than I was ten years ago – what to keep, what to leave out, what to emphasize? A lot of choices to make in a few paragraphs of text. I’m still not completely satisfied, but the process has been enlightening! What do you choose to identify yourself? How many of us have ourselves scattered about in the digital landscape, with conversations on Facebook, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and resumes on LinkedIn? While my blog is about my creative process, I wanted the website to be about what I have accomplished, what I have ready for public view. Making the design and organizational decisions of displaying that work has given me a framework to focus and hone my ongoing creative efforts, an unexpected bonus.

So, if you have read this far, perhaps you will explore my website and take a moment to send me some feedback. Many thanks in advance!

Sketches of America

Posted on October 9, 2011 by composerinthegarden

Last night, the Washington Symphony Orchestra performed “Sketches of America” as part of their “Picture This” concert. Under the creative and enthusiastic guidance of Music Director Yugo Ikach, the WSO is a community orchestra, which means that the majority of the musicians are volunteers and participate for the love of performing music. “Sketches” was originally written for and performed by the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra featuring professional soloists, including reknowned jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. I wanted to hear how the WSO would perform the piece, with very little input from me other than the written score. Would it work?

The title “Sketches of America” was a play on Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” which itself was a jazz interpretation of Rodriguez’s Adagio movement of the “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I was commissioned to create an orchestral piece that would include a section for jazz improvisation by the soloists, a somewhat daunting task in orchestral writing. My own goals were more complex – I wanted to draw on American musical traditions as well as musically reflect on my love of the American landscape. The strains of “America the Beautiful” kept running through my head as I was composing, and a few fragments of the melody crept into the piece as well.

The first section of the piece, “the painted desert” draws on minimalism, a uniquely American approach to “concert music” typified by composers like Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Inspired by a long November drive through the deserts of Arizona, a panorama of grey skies, yellow flowering shrubs, and tumbleweed, I remember a vast quiet world marked by the rhythmic turn of the car wheels. (The full version of “The Painted Desert” was used in my “Autumn Minimalism” post, in the video soundtrack)

That repeating rhythm segues into the syncopation of “a joyful blues” – another American musical tradition in the form of jazz and blues. Not content to write the traditional twelve bar blues in 4/4, I constructed a thirteen bar blues in 5/8 meter over which the solo trumpet and trombone improvise to the fast rhythms of the pizzicato strings. Those seemingly odd numbers are part of the Fibonacci number sequence, something that occurs throughout the natural world in the form of flowers, seashells, and trees.

“Sketches” closes with a chorale style section based on “Clay”, a song that I wrote in response to my efforts to dig and amend the clay in my garden. One of the lyrics, “. . . the solid ground beneath our feet” became a metaphor for the natural beauty of our vast country and the challenge of keeping it “America the beautiful.”

The WSO performance? Wonderful. The piece worked, the orchestra sounded great, the soloists rose to the challenge, and the effect was just as I had intended. That moment of hushed silence in the hall at the close of the piece, the sign that the audience was listening and involved, seemed more important than the applause that followed. Those of you who are composers know that this does not always happen! As my husband and colleague remarked later, “the piece played itself.” It was an unexpectedly moving experience and I was touched to the heart, and at that moment, I was very glad indeed to be a composer.

(The recordings above were taken from the premier of “Sketches of America” performed by Sean Jones, trumpet, and Ed Kocher, trombone, with the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sidney Harth.)

Still Point

Posted on October 3, 2011 by composerinthegarden

. . . just as a violin string’s different vibrations produce different notes, energy strings’ unique vibration patterns correspond to different subatomic particles. If this picture is correct, all of physics can be summarized as the harmonies of tiny vibrating strings, chemistry as the melodies of interacting strings, and the universe as a symphony of all strings resonating distinctly. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics, on String Theory

Physics of sound. Physics of the universe. Both attempt to describe and define how the world moves and vibrates. Molecules of air bump into each other, creating patterns and waves of sound, very similar to the way that water moves. When I was asked to write a piece to celebrate the dedication of a new performance space and audio recording suite in our music school, it seemed appropriate to focus on how sound works and how musicians gather together to “play” with sound, whether on the stage or in the studio.

But this piece was also intended to commemorate the son of the benefactor, as well as the mother for whom the Music School was named. Tragically, the grandmother and grandson had both died relatively young and had never met. The school and this new space was the connection between them, a musical connection across time and space. It struck me that the physics of sound could be extended into the quantum and string physics theories that I had been reading and studying for a number of years. There was a congruency of language used to describe our universe in motion, elegant and apt. So, through the lens of a musician who works daily with the physics of sound and also pursues a layperson’s understanding of quantum physics, I wrote “Still Point.” Written for choir, two synthesizer keyboards, and an electronic wind instrument, the piece was premiered a year ago this week.

Live performance recorded at the dedication of the Dr. Thomas D. Pappert Center for Performance and Innovation, Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University. Sung by the Voices of Spirit under the direction of Christine Jordanoff, EWI solo by Mike Tomaro.

Still point, still point
Like a pebble in a pond, a word was sung
and hung in silence until the world began.

Still point, still point
First sound from whose center came the waves.
The ripples of vibration that set the world in motion, in motion

A universe of motion, a coherent dance of sound
Form and pattern rising from a sea of possibility
Each sound becomes a pebble dropped, each note becomes a wave
Each resonance of harmony intensifies a place
where ripples and waves intersect, time and space fold, connect
through generations never met into a
still point, still point

Music, sound, harmony
Resonant frequencies
Gathering communities, communities who play with sound,
who ride its waves, explore the pool creation’s made
Perhaps in hope to hear an echo of that still point
From which a word was sung and hung in silence until the world began.
Still point.

For a detailed look at the connections between music and quantum physics, see “The Birth of the Blues: How Physics Underlies Music” from the IOP Science/IOP Publishing

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Gardening in harmony with nature

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