PROGRAM
NOTES
all moments STOP
here and together
we become every
memory that has
ever been
here and together
we become every
memory that has
ever been
For 14 Instruments and
15 Hand-cranked
Music Boxes
2003
Notes by
Ken Ueno
Ken Ueno
This piece was
written for the
Boston Modern
Orchestra Project,
Gil Rose, conductor.
The title was
borrowed from an
artwork by Ugo
Rondinone.
written for the
Boston Modern
Orchestra Project,
Gil Rose, conductor.
The title was
borrowed from an
artwork by Ugo
Rondinone.
The spaces between sounds are dramatic for me (“all moments stop here”). But these silences energize me, as a listener, to participate in each forthcoming sound. After the moment of greatest density, we arrive at a ghost of that sound world, as embodied by the delicate complexity of the music boxes en mass.
If you crank a music box very slowly, so that you isolate each note of a melody, the identity of the melody is obscured. This happens even if the melody is one that is universally known (e.g. “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” “Row, row, row your boat,” “Happy Birthday”). It is then possible to experience each note as a sound in itself, rather than as melody. One may also begin to “fill in,” mentally, fleeting references to familiar tunes. Additionally, if we experience a large collection of music boxes playing simultaneously, the melodic identity of each music box is consumed into an aggregate sound. Within this aggregate sound, one can almost “pick out” fragments of melodies, while never completely grasping them. In this piece, I wanted to investigate these perceptual boundaries.
In our daily struggle to maintain our identity in a post-industrial digital world, we are all music boxes, analog songs seeking a space in which to be heard.
If you crank a music box very slowly, so that you isolate each note of a melody, the identity of the melody is obscured. This happens even if the melody is one that is universally known (e.g. “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” “Row, row, row your boat,” “Happy Birthday”). It is then possible to experience each note as a sound in itself, rather than as melody. One may also begin to “fill in,” mentally, fleeting references to familiar tunes. Additionally, if we experience a large collection of music boxes playing simultaneously, the melodic identity of each music box is consumed into an aggregate sound. Within this aggregate sound, one can almost “pick out” fragments of melodies, while never completely grasping them. In this piece, I wanted to investigate these perceptual boundaries.
In our daily struggle to maintain our identity in a post-industrial digital world, we are all music boxes, analog songs seeking a space in which to be heard.