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TWITTERING MACHINES [2003]

[flute and piano]

Commissioned by the U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture.

Premiered Nov. 19, 2003. Boston Conservatory. Asako Arai, fl, Frank Corliss, pf.

DURATION: 12'

Program note:

The ideas the Swiss artist Paul Klee expressed concerning the structure of art have fascinated me for a long time. Klee, himself a part-time musician, compiled many of the technical features of his work in a number of volumes of inspiring pedagogic value.


Like several other composers, I have always felt attracted to what Klee could have called "Twittering Machines": the unpredictable mechanisms whose systematic—yet imperfect—behavior is not unlike the "processes" we often find in musical structures. I love to observe clockworks with missing or erratic parts; or a spider who laboriously tries to climb a wall, or one of those precarious robots built by Rodney Brooks, whose "function" is not to fulfill a task but, simply, to "exist". They are all twittering machines whose image, interestingly enough, often ignites my musical imagination. My musical "twittering machines", an uninterrupted chain of short variations, try to be be tangible, yet always imperfect, musical "mechanisms".

PURCHASE SCORE AND PARTS

Purchases: I use Paypal for online transactions.
Printed scores are wire-bound, printed on durable, 28lb paper, and shipped by US mail, unless requested otherwise.
Price listed includes S/H costs (US mail only) up to five items.
PDF sets of parts are delivered by e-mail immediately upon reciept of payment notification by Paypal (normally 1-2 days) and include a license to print an unlimited number of copies for the ensemble making the purchase.
Questions, special requests, ordering more than five items? Please contact me at carlossg[at]esm[dot]rochester[dot]edu

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