Presentation Title
C-3 Musical Composition Interacts with Place
Presenter Status
Professor of Music, Department of Music
Preferred Session
Oral Session
Location
Buller Hall 150
Start Date
3-11-2017 3:30 PM
End Date
3-11-2017 3:45 PM
Presentation Abstract
On my 2017 composition retreat in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, an evacuation from my normal retreat location there (based on local fire) occasioned my composing in a significantly different place. This new location was a ranch of nearly 1,000 acres. An early challenge at the new ranch was that of finding a preferred site or sites for composition, where the influences of both people and cows would be favorable to sustained thought. Potential wildlife predator incursion, especially by bear, was also a consideration. But this presentation focuses specifically on the relationship of poetic content in one of the poems that I set to music, to the very specific environment of the new ranch location. The poem, by Wendell Berry, reflects on the question of what “true quiet” is, relating the question to the author’s claim that “true quiet” is not a certain silence that he specifies. Particular abandoned items on the ranch played into my compositional context. I will interlace video that I shot on the ranch with content from Berry’s poem in demonstrating relationships and apparent influences of the environment on the creation of the music.
C-3 Musical Composition Interacts with Place
Buller Hall 150
On my 2017 composition retreat in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, an evacuation from my normal retreat location there (based on local fire) occasioned my composing in a significantly different place. This new location was a ranch of nearly 1,000 acres. An early challenge at the new ranch was that of finding a preferred site or sites for composition, where the influences of both people and cows would be favorable to sustained thought. Potential wildlife predator incursion, especially by bear, was also a consideration. But this presentation focuses specifically on the relationship of poetic content in one of the poems that I set to music, to the very specific environment of the new ranch location. The poem, by Wendell Berry, reflects on the question of what “true quiet” is, relating the question to the author’s claim that “true quiet” is not a certain silence that he specifies. Particular abandoned items on the ranch played into my compositional context. I will interlace video that I shot on the ranch with content from Berry’s poem in demonstrating relationships and apparent influences of the environment on the creation of the music.