Hi all,
I’m pleased to say that the video to one of my most recent pieces “My Time Machine” is now up on Youtube. (Link can be found below!)
Here are the program notes:
“Once upon a time, when I was probably about 6 years old, I tried to build a time machine. I stepped out onto the lawn, found some sticks, piled them on top of each other, stared at them, then ran crying to my dad. I realized I had no idea how to build a time machine.
My dad, a physics professor, also couldn’t build a time machine. However, he used my curiosity about time as an opportunity to teach me about the different dimensions of mathematical space. I learned that a three-dimensional being would need to go through the fourth dimension to travel back in time. To illustrate this, we created a model of a three-dimensional time machine for two-dimensional people and recorded a video of me talking about how a three-dimensional time machine would work. (He used this video in his physics lectures for several years.) This core memory became the inspiration for My Time Machine.
In Going Back Down, music mostly written in the F-sharp harmonic series stops and restarts, like an event being relived again and again, or someone repeatedly using a time machine to go back to the start. But, as with a memory, this event morphs over time, sometimes becoming longer, sometimes shorter, and going from quiet to vividly loud. The descending progression in the harp was found by taking the recorded clip played at the end of the movement and analyzing it for its stronger partials. This clip also creates the motif, first played in the piano, then brass, that returns in the other movements. I used this movement as an opportunity to explore spectralist techniques, with a very blatant Grisey reference placed a bit before the ending.
Stomposaurus is an ode to my love of dinosaurs. The reason I wanted to build a time machine in the first place was so I could see dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs because they are so monstrous, otherworldly, and potentially terrifying. (I’ve always liked bones, teeth, and creatures that can eat people for some reason.) A “stomping” motif played by the baritone sax, contrabassoon, bass trombone, and bass guitar sliding downward carries the piece, while the bass guitar plays a groovy tune in multiple modes of D (for “dinosaur!”)
Interlude I is a surprise. Interlude II plays into the third movement.
Forward emulates a return to the present. Initial harmonies ascend, contrasting the descending progression of the first movement. The main rhythm gallops ahead. There is a brassy fanfare. Unlike the other movements, this movement didn’t require a lot of cerebral planning. Instead, Forward was my way of shaking off the cobwebs of the past and looking excitedly to the future.
My Time Machine is also practice of a lesson I learned in therapy – that it helps to love your inner child. After years of writing music for others, and, more broadly, trying to be a different person for other people, I finally decided I would write a piece solely for myself and what I like. Years ago, I tried to make a time machine. So, I finally made one. This piece is My Time Machine.”
There’s a lot I want to share about my writing this, including struggles with the subject matter and style, what I learned from taking the risks I did, what I know worked/didn’t work, the illusion of rhythmical glitches, etc. However, for now I will leave it up to the listener to determine what they will.
My hope is that one day I will have the luxury to regularly write pieces of this length for larger chamber groups in more ambitious ways. I had a great time composing this and learned so much. Plus, as always, getting to work with such willing, talented musicians is a dream-come-true.
Many thanks go out to all who continue to support my music-making adventure.
Much love,
Celka