One Flat Thing, reproduced [2010]

oboe, violin, & percussion [11’]

commissioned by the ELISION Ensemble


further reading

Instrumental Mechanism and Physicality as Compositional Resources [thesis for the MPhil degree at the University of Huddersfield] [September, 2010]

Forcing the Catastrophe: An Interview with Timothy McCormack Interview by Robert Dahm on Sound is Grammar [July, 2010] [Although this piece is not explicitly discussed in this interview, it is the piece which I mention more than once as currently being worked on.]

performance history

12/20/2014 - ensemble mosaikHalle Tanzbühne. Berlin, Germany

3/18/2014 - ELISIONCarriageworks. Sydney, Australia

5/16/2012 - ELISION. Melba Hall. Melbourne University. Australia

5/11/2012 - ELISIONCrossbows Festival. Brisbane, Australia

12/6/2010 - ELISION. Kings Place. London, England

11/23/2010 - ELISION. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. England

program note

One Flat Thing, reproduced attempts to create a uniform, monolithic, static sound world from frenetic, multi-developmental, highly-defined pieces of gestrual odds-and-ends. The three instruments, constantly locking and unlocking each other from a larger array of triggers and trajectories, act as their own organizational agent. They construct a latticed network from actual events within the piece itself, and thus exist at a unique intersection between form and content, material and structure, and sound and sign. The music is, at potentially all times, all of these - all sound events carry the potential to be structural triggers; all gestures create the possibility to be perceived as significant beyond their own significance. The piece is a spider's web whose design is both its own aesthetic and its own structure. There is no difference between these two things.

One Flat Thing, reproduced owes a particularly large debt to William Forsythe and the Forsythe Company, whose projects One Flat Thing, reproduced and Synchronous Objects made this piece conceptually possible.