In Toxis Chromaticus, I wanted to mirror the phenomenological experience of contemporary life. More specifically, I was interested in the experience of the hyperreality created by our relationship to the internet and cable television: multiple-narratives that exist at the same time and cross-cutting between them. Take for example the experience of watching an hour-long t.v. show, a temporal phenomemon with a generic dramatic flow. There is a beginning at the hour, a false climax at the half-hour, real closing/climax the fifty minutes past, and a ten-minute denouement, all intercut with commercials at fixed intervals and (depending on the patience of the viewer) forays into other channels. In my music, the four-movements are independent in themselves, but, together, create a larger, linear, narrative flow (the main show), which is interrupted at strategic points by non-diegetic material (the commercials and forays into other channels). I wanted to use this kind of form to contrast music that is goal oriented (the main narrative) with music that has a static quality (the commercials), as well as music that had other kinds speeds/levels of goal orientation (the forays into other channels). The connection we make between all the disparate narratives is at the level of the pure signifier, the simplest of musical devices — the repeated note, the accented note, the trill, etc. Therefore, deconstruction serves as proxy for classical musical “development” in the dialectic of this music — a musical object is presented and then it is reduced to its simplest constituent elements (the aforementioned musical devices such as the repeated note being some of these elements).

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