In 1966-68 I was composer-in-residence for the Ithaca City School District, arriving directly from West Berlin, Germany where I had been studying on a Fulbright fellowship. In 1967 I introduced myself to Bob Moog whom I had heard about from several people around Ithaca. Bob had his company in Trumansburg, a twenty minute drive from Ithaca.
Bob was happy to see someone interested in learning and using
his new invention, the voltage-controlled electronic synthesizer.
To me, it looked like the cockpit of an airplane and hopelessly
complicated. Bob though, took me under his wing and patiently
taught me how to use it although I ruined some of his modules
along the way. In fact, I hooked them up in such a bizarre way,
not understanding what I was doing, that they redesigned several
of the modules, not having anticipated someone as me who was totally
unaware of the principles behind the design: otherwise they would
have faced many returned synthesizers burned out by neophytes
likes me. I didn't realize that Bob was using me as a test person
until several months later when it became clear that I finally
knew what I was doing. He explained that I helped in the research
to idiot-proof the soon-to-be famous Moog Synthesizer: I had been
chief idiot, which upon reflection, I enjoyed immensely.
By 1968 I was hired as Composer-Pianist for Dance by Cornell University.
Since the dance program was part of the Women's Physical Education
Program which in turn was administered by the Department of Athletics,
we were a very insignificant part of the operation, and although
my title looked good on paper, in reality I was listed in the
directory as a Phys. Ed. Instructor, learning later that this
was the lowest paying staff job at Cornell. But the good thing
was there were no administrative responsibilities, no meetings
to attend and one had only to prepare for teaching half of one
class; the rest was improvisation which I had been doing since
I was ten years old. This left plenty of time to work late into
the night at the Moog Company (Bob had provided a key long before)
discovering new ways to compose using the huge modular Moog and
the four-track Scully tape recorder. Soon, I was using the synthesizer
in all compositions, including those for dance concerts as part
of my job.
With this new work, Peggy Lawler, the primary dance instructor/choreographer
would arrange for students and staff (she and I) to travel to
New York City to see modern dance concerts. This is when I discovered
Merce Cunningham and the musicians around him including John Cage,
Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and David Tudor. Seeing them perform
live electronic music forever changed my way of thinking about
performing music. Especially electronic music. Until then, I thought
of it as making tapes in a studio; after that electronic music
became something to be performed, even if pre-recorded tapes were
occasionally involved. In 1969 the Cunningham Company visited
Ithaca for a performance and some dance workshops. It was then
that I met Gordon Mumma and David Tudor who would later participate
in one of the first performances of Cloudscape for Peggy (composed
for Lawler's choreography in 1970), among my first all-synthesizer
pieces designed for live performance. Late in 1968 I decided to
start a live electronic (and amplified acoustic) group to present
concerts of new and startling work, and remember getting ideas
from Mumma and Tudor as well as Source Magazine, an avant garde
music publication out of Davis, California which included new
works by young composers.
One of the first things to think about was a name for the new
ensemble: I wanted it to be ironic in some way but certainly didn't
wish for an academic sounding name. It was constantly on my mind
for several days: while shopping in a supermarket, I leaned over
their frozen food section and the friendly senior-citizen face
of Mrs. Smith of Mrs. Smith's Frozen Pies hit me and immediately
I thought of my own grandmother, Lena Belle Mallard. She was called
Mother Mallard because she had had her picture taken for the Boston
papers to show five generations of Mallards of which she was the
progenitor. Mother Mallard had a nice alliteration, but what else?
The word 'masterpiece' followed because it began with an "m",
and besides, we were always joking about how it was no longer
necessary nor desirable to think in terms of masterpieces. So
now I had the image I wanted; a friendly grandmother behind which
we would perform outrageous pieces like Robert Ashley's Wolfman,
a feedback assault on the ears while miming the movements of a
crooner. A couple of days later the word 'portable' was inserted
before 'masterpiece' as an added oxymoronic juxtaposition: Mother
Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. was thus born. Our first concert
happened in May of 1969 in Barnes Hall on the Cornell University
campus. It included Wolfman by Ashley, Pitch Out by Allen Bryant
(for which Bard Prentiss made amplified string instruments, played
on with metal bars and files), a piece by Dan Lentz which included
a sinister looking man (Steve Drews) taking collection in the
audience, and finally some "classic" pieces by Morton
Feldman and John Cage. It was a success.
After this, I planned to compose pieces for live electronic performance
using synthesizers. Bob Moog agreed to let us use whatever was
available. My approach to composition was changing quickly away
from the complex atonal methods being taught in most universities
at the time to a simpler, tonal way. I was very impressed with
Terry Riley's In C, and started to work with drones and complex
rhythms, bringing my jazz background into play.
My work as dance accompanist was also affected by this, as I tried
out various repeated patterns during my daily work, and would
work them out later at night at the Moog Studio. Using the four-track
tape recorder was also appealing because it accentuated the contrapuntal
approach I had always favored: now it was possible to compose
one person's part all the way through and then add another person's
part on top with each retaining an individual integrity. This
technique is commonly called layering, but this type was more
extreme like working with a cantus firmus, a Medieval practice.
My first tonal steady pulse piece for the Moog was Easter, composed
for a dance student in April, 1970. (It was finished a few days
before Easter, hence the title.) Steve Drews and I performed it
live with tape at Sage Chapel on the Cornell campus on Easter
Sunday, 1970. This was the first live performance using a MiniMoog.
We had the prototype.
At this time, Moog got a call from Trinity Church in Manhattan
asking if he could recommend or supply a live performance involving
the Moog Synthesizer for one of their Lunchtime Concerts. Moog
was becoming famous as an inventor due to the acclaim of Switched-On
Bach, an LP by Walter Carlos, a collection of Bach works realized
on the Moog, even making the cover of Time Magazine. As Bob recommended
me, I asked Steve Drews to play in EASTER, using a prepared tape.
This was the first public performance in New York City using a
MiniMoog. Although the official debut of the MiniMoog was months
away (by Dick Hyman), we took the prototype to New York. We arrived
at Trinity Church to find that we hadn't been listed as either
Mother Mallard or David Borden but The Moog Synthesizer: this
kind of billing would dominate our appearances for the first few
years, because no one else was performing with Moog Synthesizers
except for Walter Carlos, who rarely performed live, and Richard
Teitlebaum, who was in Europe.
During the summer of 1970 I worked for the Summer School as Barbara
Lloyd's accompanist. Lloyd was one of Cunningham's star soloists
and is now known as Barbara Dilley. She has been president of
the Naropa Institute. Working with Barbara was a joy, and I often
brought a Moog to the dance studio to improvise on. I also worked
with visiting filmmaker Ed Emshwiller and wrote the soundtrack
for his film Branches, which he hurriedly produced with summer
students, and also composed Cloudscape For Peggy for an Ithaca
College performance by Peggy Lawler. During this summer I also
got to know Gordon Mumma (then visiting Barbara for several weeks)
who greatly enhanced my knowledge of the perils of live electronic
performance. At the time, he saw to it that all of John Cage's
ideas for Cunningham were realized electronically. The going joke
was that Cage, whom everyone loved, and who was the pioneer of
live electronic performance had trouble plugging in his electric
razor. So Gordon took care of the technical problems. Steve Reich
was another visitor to Ithaca that summer. Cornell was his alma
mater, and he was also interested in seeing the Moog Studio. We
have been friends ever since. Finally, Phil Glass passed through
Ithaca the following fall resulting in an ongoing friendship.
During the summer of 1970, Steve Drews also started composing
pieces for live performance using Moog Synthesizers. With the
pieces I wrote for the Cornell Dance Program, together with Steve's
new pieces, there was enough for an entire program of our own
music, using only Moogs with the occasional guest performer on
another instrument. We invited Linda Fisher to join us for some
concerts: she agreed and in 1971 became a permanent member, contributing
her RMI Electric Piano as well. The Moog Company kept receiving
requests for concerts and/or demonstrations, so they would always
recommend us. That's how we began travelling around, giving concerts.
We also arranged to buy several synthesizers over a four-year
period. We went to local banks for a loan, but were unsuccessful,
so Bob let us pay him quarterly and refused to charge interest.
In the fall of 1971, Bob Moog, facing bankruptcy, decided to sell
his company to a businessman in Buffalo, New York rather than
see his customers go without technical support for the units he
had sold them. Even with his fame, musicians were not flocking
to buy his synthesizer, and music stores were still reluctant
to stock them. So sadly, Bob left Trumansburg, and for five years
was a techno-slave for the new owners, doing some public relations
work and uninteresting technical work. When Bob came out of debt
five years later, he threw a big party. In the years that followed
he founded another business called Big Briar (he had signed away
the right to use his own name in a business title) and then spent
several years as a research vice-president for Kurzweil. He still
heads up Big Briar, making theremins and other musical-electronic
devices for live performance. Only recently has he been able to
use his name again as part of his business logo.
When Bob left the area, Mother Mallard rented a rural farmhouse
in Enfield, N.Y., between Trumansburg and Ithaca. Chris Swanson,
a jazz composer and recent user of the Moog Studio, found the
place. It was perfect: quiet, isolated, inexpensive. Together
we shared it as our work studio. Chris worked mornings and afternoons,
we took the nights. It was here that we really came into our own,
rehearsing almost every night, drilling ourselves on how quickly
we could change the dozens of patch cords between pieces and blindly
set up intricate sounds (i.e., without testing them audibly before
playing them). During the winter of 1971-72, Merce Cunningham
came to Binghamton (one hour away from Ithaca). With him arrived
some additional staff: his touring manager Jane Yockel and costume
manager, Margaret Wood, formerly with Cornell's Dance Program.
She drove from Binghamton and brought Jane to dinner at my house.
As soon as they arrived, one of the worst blizzards in Finger
Lakes history hit. Jane and Margaret were snowed in with us for
four days and nights, which turned out to be a blessing. Jane
and Margaret, in partnership with Mimi Johnson, (a young woman
who managed John Cage's affairs) were in the midst of starting
their own managing team for performing avant garde artists
Performing Arts Services, which was partially born under my roof,
and soon Mother Mallard became one of their first clients. It
was through the efforts of Artservices, as it became known, that
MMPMC began to be frequent performers in various SoHo performance
spaces, as well as the WBAI Free Music Store [live concerts broadcast
from Pacifica Radio's New York affiliate.] These appearances brought
reviews, including the New York Times, and also reached a much
wider audience than we would have otherwise.
During this time, Steve and I (and sometimes Linda) composed new
works to perform. A few of our pieces, like Steve's Ceres Motion
employed the use of a mobius strip tape loop: Gordon Mumma turned
us on to these. They came in various time lengths. You could tape
something live and at the end of the tape, turn off the record
button and play it back instantly. Each of us had a stopwatch
to keep track of the loop lengths. The first part of Ceres Motion
is what is now commonly called a pad. Steve and I recorded the
pad (around 5 minutes), played it back instantly, and being a
loop, it would go on forever until we turned off the tape recorder.
When the pad is played back for the first time, the piece changes
into an up-tempo mantra with Steve improvising patterns on a Modular
Moog and with his free hand, adjusting the knobs of a fixed filter
bank accentuating different harmonics for each section. Steve
found very exotic and beautiful sounds on the Moogs, and was a
master performer on the ribbon controller. I kept to more simple
sounds with emphasis on multi-metered contrapuntal figures that
repeated at different time lengths. In the early 70s, this kind
of music wasn't yet called Minimalism critics would refer
to it as "synthesizer music", "trance music"
or simply deride it as boring because "nothing happened."
By the fall of 1972 we had developed enough music to perform three
or four programs without repeating anything and started looking
around for a recording label. Audiences loved our concerts, as
our performances had achieved a professional polish while sounding
fresh, original. Many phone calls, talks with many record executives,
countless demo tapes were mailed to no avail. After several
months of no takers, I decided to start my own record company.
Margaret Wood at Artservices thought it was a great idea. The
only problem was, I only had half the money needed. Margaret calculated
the costs of mastering, pressing and cover printing, approximately
$1500. I only had half and couldn't get a loan. During the summer
of 1973, Mickey Arrandt, a budding photographer who had been taking
pictures of us for several weeks, mentioned that his girlfriend,
Cornell student Judy Borsher, was interested in making a business
investment in the new record company. Judy, who would later take
Linda Fisher's place in Mother Mallard, made it possible to start
Earthquack Records. Mother Mallard as an image had long ago gone
from a friendly senior citizen to a duck. In fact, fans used to
give us various duck gifts at concerts, so we went along, perching
a duck decoy atop one of the synthesizers. The first LP was "in
the can" by early fall, but with delays in printing the cover
and pressing the disks, it wasn't available until late January
1974. It was distributed through JCOA (Jazz Composer's Orchestra
Association), a group pioneered by jazz composer Carla Bley. Artservices,
seeing that producing independent LPs and getting them distributed
was not as difficult as they had imagined, started Lovely Music
modeled after this first Earthquack LP.
Meanwhile, director Billy Friedkin had heard some re-broadcasts
of our WBAI Free Music Store concerts and was interested in having
me compose music for his new horror film. We were all invited
to the cast party of The Exorcist at the end of shooting, and
Billy introduced us to everyone as the people who were to do the
soundtrack. In the end, he would use only three short pieces of
mine for The Exorcist. He asked if I was considering a move to
Hollywood, to which I said no. The year 1973 ended with offers
from both Hollywood and Europe. I didn't want to go to Hollywood,
Steve didn't want to go to Europe and Linda wanted to do her own
thing. A few months after that film party in Manhattan, Mother
Mallard would change forever.
In 1974, Mother Mallard continued performing at the WBAI Free
Music Store and downtown venues like the Paula Cooper Gallery,
the Kitchen, and various lofts in New York City. Otherwise, there
were college and university concerts, mostly in the northeast.
By the end of 1974 Linda let us know that she wanted to pursue
her own path and by the summer of 1975 Judy Borsher joined us.
There were a couple of interim keyboardists, but they were just
temporary replacements. Judy proved to be excellent in every way,
surprising us with her fluid keyboard technique and rapid grasp
of the technology. By the end of 1975 Steve Drews decided he wanted
to give up music and pursue a career in photography (he has his
own successful photography studio in St. Louis). He was replaced
by Chip Smith, a wonderful keyboardist who had played with Chuck
Berry, including his Carnegie Hall concert. This group has remained
in my memory with great affection. After several months Steve
left Ithaca and withdrew his pieces from our repertoire. From
that point until now, Mother Mallard has played only my compositions.
Also with this group, I shouldered the financial responsibilities
for all of the music equipment except for Chip Smith's Fender
Rhodes, the second polyphonic keyboard in our collection. When
Linda Fisher left, I bought her RMI Piano. Now Mother Mallard
had three Modular Moogs, two MiniMoogs, and the two electric pianos.
Judy contributed her van for our transportation. Although constantly
broke, we enjoyed touring and playing: this group was the last
of the Moog-based bands. Unfortunately we never made a studio
recording although there are live tapes from a few concerts [tracks
1 & 2]. It lasted from late 1975 to the summer of 1978, when
I decided to spend more time with my family and give up the band
for awhile.
The Continuing Story of Counterpoint (hereafter referred to as
TCSOC) which was begun in 1976 and completed in 1987, derives
its title from several sources: at Phil Glass's Town Hall concert
of 1974 he and his ensemble premiered a couple of pieces from
a new cycle he called Another Look at Harmony. These pieces later
became assimilated into Einstein on the Beach, but the original
title struck a chord. My approach had always been contrapuntal,
so I filed away the idea of using the word "counterpoint"
in the title of a future series of pieces. While composing the
first of these pieces (1976) the soap opera parody Mary Hartman,
Mary Hartman was becoming a huge success on television, which
gave me the idea for a title that sounded like a soap opera. And
lastly, although it was purely subconscious, I must have had The
Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, the title of a tune from the
Beatles' White Album floating around in the psyche somewhere.
It was perfect. It didn't sound didactic, it alluded to history
and contained a few multi-syllabic words instead of those awful
one-word titles of esoteric foreign origin used by so many academic
composers.
TCSOC began with a simple note-against-note idea [see back cover
reproduction of the score] and my desire to develop a contrapuntal
language, influenced primarily, but not completely, by contrapuntal
composers from Machaut (14th century) to Josquin (15th - 16th
century), the period before functional harmony was codified; I
have always been drawn to this period due to an inability to 'hear'
functional harmony. As long as I can remember, I have had perfect
pitch and always listened to music as simultaneous melodies and
rhythms, so that's how I approach my work. Even though my "harmonic
hearing" ability has improved with age, I still don't hear
functions, but absolute pitches.
Another catalyst in developing this contrapuntal language was
the disappointment felt after several years of having taken all
available courses in counterpoint at both Eastman and Harvard.
Before Eastman, I also studied aspects of counterpoint with Hugo
Norden at Boston University and with jazz composer/performer Jimmy
Giuffre. But even after diligently studying Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum
(1725) on my own, I came away unfulfilled. This is the book that
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven treated as a bible. It is a complete
step-by-step guide to modal counterpoint; Haydn never left home
without it. It was supposed to lead to the promised land of intellectual
control and spiritual soaring that mastery of the art of counterpoint
brings with it. It brought me back to the realization that artistic
theories may bring creative artists to the edge of the water,
but jumping in is another matter.
So, I started these pieces with the intention of controlling large
structures by composing not only simultaneous melodies that each
had their own personality, but in some cases, simultaneous two-handed
keyboard parts that could stand alone as solo parts but when combined
with the others, lost their individuality to the whole. This idea
came from Buckminster Fuller's definition of synergy: behavior
of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of any of its parts
taken separately. I liked this definition of synergy so much that
in most of the parts of TCSOC, I composed one person's part all
the way through before adding another part. The pieces are held
together by disparate meters (rhythmic elements) that resolve
themselves in cycles and by the "harmonic" content of
modal scales. The twelve parts are cyclical and refer to themselves
in various ways, and all parts contain the basic note-against-note
melodic figure (shown above) in varying degrees.
Originally these pieces were composed for an ensemble of three
keyboard performers playing an RMI Electric Piano (polyphonic)
and five Moog Synthesizers (three modular systems and two MiniMoogs).
The Moogs were all monophonic, so a performer would play two keyboards,
one for each hand, much like an organist. Sometimes a performer
would play the RMI Piano with the right hand, and a MiniMoog with
the left. With so many keyboards available, there were several
configurations. Eventually another polyphonic keyboard was added
(a Fender Rhodes Piano) which keyboardist Chip Smith brought with
when he replaced Steve Drews in 1977. In the 1980s the ensemble
went through major changes with digital instruments replacing
the original Moogs, and the personnel expanded to include an electric
guitar, soprano and wind instruments. With these changes TCSOC
also expanded its scope. It was composed slowly over a period
of eleven years, with all designed to be performed by three keyboard
performers. The timbral quality of the pieces has changed over
time, which they were designed to do. Even as they were being
composed I realized that electronic instruments would continue
to evolve and that the sounds would not be the same, although
I didn't realize that computers would eventually replace the analog
instruments we had at the time.
* * *
C-A-G-E III (1975) differs in most respects from the preceding
two C-A-G-E pieces. The earlier pair were built on a continuous
loop using the pitches c-a-g-e. In fact, this was probably one
of the earliest examples of a loop-based composition using a sequencer.
The sequencer was analog and the prototype of Bob Moog's 24-slot
device which could be controlled in many ways, including random
switching using filtered white or pink noise. For this third member
of the group though, the loop idea was abandoned in favor of another
way to present the c-a-g-e pitches, the main idea behind these
pieces in tribute to John Cage.
Although aware of the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass since
1970 when we met and established our friendships, the influences
on my music came from two other sources: Terry Riley and Bob Moog.
The first led to my return to a simple version of tonality/modality
in conjunction with repetitive rhythmic cycles (later labeled
"minimalism") while the second changed the way I thought
about the composition process itself and how music was produced,
since synthesizer technology and its ancillary technologies (i.
e. multi-track tape recorders, sound systems, mixers etc.) were
new to me when first encountering them in 1967. (None of the aforementioned
composers used synthesizers until well into the 1980s.) The other
influences on my music since adolescence have been a love for
jazz and counterpoint.
All synthesizers were monophonic in 1975, that is, one could play
only one note at a time. You couldn't play chord changes although
a single note could trigger a chord, it could trigger only that
chord at different pitch levels, a common device in Debussy's
music, known as "planing"; changing the plane of the
chord but not its internal intervalic relationships. In addition,
the keyboard connected to the synthesizer had no velocity control
(like a harpsichord, no volume accents); it could only control
frequency (pitch) and trigger the envelopes. Envelopes opened
and closed a voltage-controlled amplifier that gave the oscillators
an amplitude shape and also opened and closed a voltage-controlled
filter (low-pass, high-pass or band-pass) that gave the sound
its harmonic sweep. These limitations, along with the synthesizers
having difficulty staying in tune during live performance, were
major drawbacks for most composer/performers. The positive factors
were a vast array of timbres to choose from and that Moog Synthesizers
were indestructible.
With this in mind, try envisioning the ensemble of three keyboardists
for which C-A-G-E III was composed: Performer One played an RMI
Electric Piano with the right hand and a MiniMoog (prototype)
with the left. Performer Two played a Moog Modular (custom) with
the right hand and a Moog X (modular precursor of the MiniMoog)
with the left. Performer Three played a Moog 1CA (modular prototype
with memory) with the right hand and MiniMoog (made in Trumansburg,
N.Y.) with the left. Therefore, each performer played two different
keyboards all the time, one for each hand.
The sounds used for faster notes played on the Moogs were near-unison
sawtooth waves lightly filtered so that the rich "buzz"
of the Moog oscillators coupled with the lowpass filter could
come through. This turned out to be a "signature" sound
of the Moogs, most recently emulated on the new Novation analogue
sound modeling synthesizers as the "Double Saw" sound.
The slower notes, played with the left hands of Performers 2 &
3 were much the same except that the envelopes were slower to
open and close. Towards the end, just before the MiniMoog bass
sound enters, Player 1 has rests for the left hand which allows
time to reset the MiniMoog by turning up the pulse wave tuned
an octave below the sawtooth producing the classic Moog bass sound.
In addition, Player 3 had the synthesizers tuned to an open fifth
( a simple chord rather than a single pitch) and used the planing
technique mentioned above.
Whereas the first two C-A-G-E pieces were restricted to pitches
found only in the Aeolian mode based on A (no sharps or flats),
C-A-G-E III uses scales and modes in other tonalities as well.
This is one of the reasons it is not a loop-based composition,
although the pitches c-a-g-e are found in scales based on the
key signatures of one flat or one sharp. Until the mid-70s, new
tonal music restricted itself to one harmonic area for pieces
of long duration in a kind of trance-inducing way. At about this
time, Tom Johnson, a composer and critic writing in the Village
Voice borrowed the term "minimalism" from the art world
to describe a new music which had been going on for over ten years,
starting with the work of La Monte Young and Terry Riley.
I was much influenced by a piece of Phil Glass's at his 1974 Town
Hall concert, called "Another Look at Harmony", which
has not survived (as far as I know) but was subsumed into his
"Einstein on the Beach" score. First of all, I loved
the title and decided then and there that I would use the word
"counterpoint" in the title of my next big series of
pieces. Secondly, the piece used harmonic change in a very tertian
way, using melodic thirds which would change over time one pitch
at a time. It set the stage for the kind of melodic/harmonic motion
we all recognize as Phil's language, his distinct voice. A simple,
but elegant signature - a language recognized immediately. I knew
right away that I could not imitate such a personal voice that
was emerging, but did realize that the new music we were composing
would soon become more harmonically intricate to match the already
complex rhythms associated with it. My first foray into this area
of changing tonalities within a piece (in the new so-called "minimalist"
genre) was C-A-G-E III.
This modulatory approach was accomplished by focusing on scales,
modes and counterpoint rather than gradual harmonic and chordal
changes. The piece was arranged in repetitive modules, with each
player changing modules on cue, at the same time. In the earlier
C-A-G-E pieces, although there were repetitive modules for each
player, the change occurred at a specific time set by synchronized
stop watches, with each player having a different time cue. Since
C-A-G-E III used changing tonalities, this arrangement would not
work unless one allowed for a clash of tonalities, which I didn't.
The piece starts in the Dorian mode on G (one flat) and the first
seven modules emphasize the pitches G & C, although other
pitches are present. This section is played by Players 1 &
2. Modules 8 - 13 are in Dorian mode on B (three sharps) and the
change is intentionally quite unexpected. In this section there
are also hints of Mixolydian on E. The featured pitches in the
section are A & E and all three players take part and remain
active for the rest of the piece. Modules 14 - 19 oscillate between
Aeolian mode on C and the Phrygian mode on G (three flats). The
featured pitches are C, G, Eb, with Ab gradually becoming more
prominent. Modules 20 - 23 comprise the final section in Aeolian
mode on A, the parent key of the first two C-A-G-E pieces. All
four pitches are prominent in this section although other pitches
are present. The bass line uses C-A-G and F while the upper voices
feature E in long notes and as part of fast figures. The pitch
F is used to create a tension-release pattern with E.
C-A-G-E III was the last piece I composed before starting on "The
Continuing Story of Counterpoint" in which the same kind
of compositional techniques were used and expanded upon. Nowadays,
it seems unbelievable that synthesizers were once so rare a sight
and that they were so difficult to manage during live performance.
Computer technology has changed everything, not only revolutionizing
the way music is produced, recorded and composed, but practically
all in our daily lives. Even though John Cage died in 1992, he
is still a presence in my music via digital sampling and his enduring
playful sense of intellectual and spiritual adventure.
-- David Borden. January 7, 2003. Ithaca, NY
Note: the 1977 concert program contains the following statement:
"Mr. Borden is concerned with developing a self-regenerative modularly constructed music using rhythmically similar but intervalically diverse contrapuntal repetitive patterns resulting in synergetic constellations that develop both gradually and suddenly in sporadically changing harmonic settings."