Big and Small Cycles — A program note to Here 49 ̇52’34 N 97 ̇8’42 W Big – movement of the sun/moon Medium – pitch Small – colour 12 months/12 tones Abstraction and simplification of the complexities of real world. 6’ piece – 30” per month; each tone = 1 month Sense of place as latitude dictates solar angles and night/day ratios; longitude dictates the rhythm of our day relative to everyone else’s — e.g. time zone position, news/financial cycle. There is much made of the analogy between pitch and colour. Even before we realized that they are both examples of simple harmonic motion, we seem to have used the one to describe the other (usually timbre in music, and colour harmony in visual art). Colour is of very high frequency, sound considerably lower. I’m interested in the even longer wavelength of the solar year, and the analogy that might be made between musical time/pitch and the changing angles of the sun at a particular place, namely my home and surroundings. The changing angle of sunlight throughout the year is the most long-lived aspect of any specific place, and what it falls on and how it changes appearances gives rhythm to the year. Here explores this poetic connection as a tribute to my home and surroundings. My previous work has often been concerned with how familiar tunes or musical gestures can be transformed by putting them through different pitch and rhythm algorithms, and I tried to capture the feel of my particular solar year starting with the coincidence of 12 months and 12 tones, with each pitch centre having its own feel while simultaneously morphing into the next. There is also a corresponding increase and decrease in rhythmic density as the year moves towards and away from the summer solstice. I’m also interested in musically evoking the analogy among light (colour), sound (pitch) and day/season (solar angle) where they are all manifestations of simple harmonic motion at vastly different frequencies and in different mediums. The timbral palette and rich traditional and modern vocabulary of the big jazz ensemble is fertile ground for this.
