w15956
| Title | Making Waves |
| Contributors |
Cameron Sinclair (composer) |
| Composition date | 2000 |
| Duration (mins) | 29 |
| Category | orchestral |
| Instrumentation | 222(bcl)2Dijeridu 2221 3 Perc* Pf Str Voices (opt) |
| Commissioned by | Medical Research Council / Creating Sparks Festival |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | 28 09 2000 Royal College of Music / Kevin Hathway Creating Sparks Festival 2000 |
| Notes | * Percussion : 2 mar, vib. w sus cymb. w tom-toms, tam-tam, bd, hi-hat, 2 sets cro, 10 or more handbells, small shaker, 3 mouth organs, log drum, claves, maraca, guiro, finger cymb. low electric siren, 4 flower pots, water gong, wterphone, ratchet, referee's whistle, cymb on tp, 16 or more wine glasses |
| Programme Note | Programme Note Making Waves was commissioned by the Medical Research Council for the Creating Sparks Festival in September 2000, which brought scientists, artists, actors, writers and musicians together for the largest science and arts festival since the Great Exhibition in 1851. Organised by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the festival involved collaborations between Imperial College, The Natural History Museum, Royal Albert Hall, Royal College of Art, Royal College of Music, Royal Geographical Society, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The title refers to sonic activity at its most fundamental level - the creation and perception of sound waves - and was written in response to the fascinating discussions I had with scientists from the Medical Research Council. As a composer more used to thinking about the social aspect of music making, I found examining it through the eyes and ears of those who have a scientific interest in the phenomena of sound enormously stimulating to the creative process. As musicians we tend to think of acoustics in an intuitive and rather subjective way, so it was fascinating to learn about recent research into psychoacoustics and discover how science tries to explain how our brains process sound. The detection of sound - and therefore our reaction to music - is the result of a complex interaction of physics, physiology, sensation, perception and cognition and my main interest lay in the confluence of psychoacoustics and cognitive psychology, which attempts to offer a richer explanation of our experience of auditory phenomena. Some of the experiments demonstrated to me had a direct bearing on the piece: the ‘cambiata illusion’ for instance gives the impression of creating a smooth musical line from two sets of superimposed wide-ranging intervals, which is similar to the way in which phasing two identical musical lines creates the impression of a third composite part – an incidence of the brain’s analytical processing and re-organising of tones to create orderly, recognisable patterns. Musical transients are sometimes disguised - crotales, vibraphone and cymbals sound very different when bowed for example - and removing the attack alters perception of the beautiful complexity of tones contained within one note. The piece begins almost imperceptibly with a quiet cymbal roll, its pitch altered by placing it on a pedal timpano. The gentle non-rhythmic sounding of handbells creates a sense of floating in space, before a bowed vibraphone and string harmonics emerge from the texture, playing the series of descending major sevenths from which the melodic and harmonic material of the piece is derived. After a sudden increase in density with fast chromatic figurations, the sevenths are transformed into a repetitive rhythmic idea that undergoes a process of phasing. A brief reminder of the slow string music is interrupted by a more forceful movement, the theme played out in minor seconds before reappearing as sevenths in the solo marimba part. At the end of this section the brass players play percussion instruments, emphasising the sense of rhythmic drive, before the piano leads - via a metric modulation - into a mechanistic series of superimposed polyrhythms. A period of stasis follows, the opening and closing of brass wah-wah mutes setting up the rich harmonics of the Dijeridu, before a driving movement reminiscent of the marimba solo section, cuts in. The tempo gradually increases through a sequence of stepped accelerations, culminating in a cataclysmic outburst of sound, all instruments playing at their extremes of register and volume, giving the sound a palpably physical presence. Making Waves ends with an evocation of the opening, re-orchestrated to leave the ethereal sine wave-like quality of wineglasses and waterphone hanging in space. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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