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Program of Sound Currents 1, February 25, 2003 Ben Houge, Music from Arcanum (musica arcana) Mike Min, Folding Geoff Ogle, String Quartet No. 1 Korby Sears, Water for Pistons Ben Houge, Music from Arcanum (musica arcana) Music from Arcanum is a collection of pieces I wrote between late 1999 and summer 2000 for the computer game Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, which was developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra Entertainment in 2001. Although I have worked for Sierra as a composer and sound designer since 1996 and have provided audio for a number of games, it was particularly fulfilling to work with an acoustic ensemble in realizing a complete game soundtrack. To anyone who has not played video games recently, this may come as a surprise, but the technology has existed for about the last decade that allows most personal computers to play digital audio; this means that any type of music, once recorded digitally, may serve as a computer game soundtrack. While styles such as rock and electronic dance music remain popular choices for game soundtracks, many games have been scored for symphony orchestras, big bands, and other acoustic ensembles. The medium of video games is a fertile soil for the creative composer. The non-linear, interactive nature of the medium challenges composers to structure and organize music in fundamentally new ways. As a relatively young multi-media genre, games are relatively free of the burden of convention inherent in film and television, not to mention opera and ballet. And as games surpass films as a popular form of entertainment, new genres of interactive art are emerging to parallel the audience's growth. Arcanum is a unique game that necessitated a unique score. The central conflict of the game is the encroachment of technology such as guns and steam engines into a fantasy world dominated by magic-wielding wizards and elves. To mirror the anachronism of a superstitious medieval world undergoing an industrial revolution, I chose to write music influenced by the modes and phrasings of early polyphony, but to score it for an ensemble that came into maturity much later, the classical string quartet. This approach was originally suggested by the Kronos Quartet's album Early Music, which was a key inspiration throughout this project. Although some of the music strayed from this original conception, traces remain in the simple, modal contours of the individual parts, the cadences on open chords, and the relatively constrained range of the instruments. Music from Arcanum is a set of eighteen short pieces for string quartet, and a performance of the work may consist of all or any subset of these pieces, arranged in any order. By presenting the music in this way, I sought to reflect the variable nature of the game medium; just as the order in which the pieces occur while playing the game varies depending on how the player progresses, different performances of Music from Arcanum may vary substantially. To experience the balance of the collection, you may download free scores and recordings of this music, as well as much more information about Arcanum, at www.benhouge.com. Mike Min, Folding The ensemble consists of one singer/conductor and three loopers. The singer/conductor will sing four major phrase phases: a timbral study, a caricature of Korean folk songs, a caricature of Baptist sermons, and a percussive study. The singer will avoid standard pitch and rhythmic increments and assumptions. The singer will not sing words. The initial sung phrase will be followed by a pause and repeated an indeterminate amount of times (more than 2 and less than unappealing). The singer will then follow the initial sung phrase with an improvised "complementary" variation based on what he/she is hearing at that moment, also repeating the variation an indeterminate amount of times. "Complementary" implies the same feel but also the complete opposite feel. However, it does not imply a feel in between similar and opposite. The singer will start the next major phrase phase when appropriate. The loopers will take real time sampled loops when the singer/conductor signals each separately to commence. The samples can either be taken from the singer solely or from the whole ensemble at the looper's discretion. The duration of the samples is also at the looper's discretion. The looper will dynamically color the playback of sampled loops using shifts in settings of reverb, delay, EQ filters, volume, panning, reverse, and/or pitch shifting. The intent is to improvise complementary variations on what the looper is hearing at that moment, creating sounds that feel right. The looper is free to abandon one sample and take another at his/her discretion. The singer/conductor will signal when each looper will commence and cease, trying different combinations throughout the piece. After exploring the four major phrase phases sufficiently, the singer will stop the ensemble. Geoff Ogle, String Quartet No. 1 The genesis of String Quartet No. 1 occurred as I watched my wife and sister swim in Lake Temagami on our property in Ontario during the summer of 1998. I was watching them swim and was moved to start writing notes on manuscript and the central movement (scherzo) was born. Although we were all supposedly enjoying a vacation and we were surrounded by quiet, placid Canadian wilderness, my wife and I were in the midst of a life-changing event: the death of my mother-in-law, Ann Garretson Ford. Ann had open-heart surgery as we were driving across the country for our vacation and would suffer the first of a series of strokes that would end her life as we readied ourselves to leave Lake Temagami. Grief is a complex emotion and the genesis of the piece occurred in the midst of some of its initial phases. Death by stroke can be a long process, as the heart will continue to beat well after the mind has been destroyed, and Ann's case followed this process. Susan and I had been married merely a year when this happened and exposed the true nature of the family I had joined the previous year. This piece is not dedicated to Ann Ford nor is it a celebration of her life as a wife, mother, philanthropist and community leader; those works are yet to come. It is a musical reflection of my observations and experience of events surrounding her death. Through these experiences, it became apparent joining a family is a messy process, which, in many ways, never ends. There are constant new discoveries and tension. Expectations are not always fulfilled. Misunderstanding abounds as members search for shared meaning and a common vocabulary. It is often "where the rubber meets the road." I feel these were a few of the concepts influencing me as I made choices composing at the time. The String Quartet is organized into five movements and utilizes traditional forms: sonata-allegro, theme and variation, scherzo/chain form, tertiary and sonata/rondo. I chose these forms as a receptacle for the emotions I was seeking to express. It is with these forms I had an opportunity express ideas and emotions more abstract, singular and unencumbered by a narrative; the form provides the narrative and I was left with the task of communicating emotional gestures. The first movement (sonata-allegro) was composed largely as we joined Susan's family in Cleveland, Ohio. We were there as Ann recovered and would eventually enter into hospice care at home. The family was left to make decisions that would influence her health and there were scant clues as to her true wishes. It was a turbulent time when unresolved issues within the family were magnified. The subsequent three movements were completed over the following two years, which also saw the birth of our first child and a career change for both of us. The initial impulse of a piece, what Ken Wilbur would describe as the "primal art holon," is the spirit in action that bubbles to the surface through an artist's psyche to manifest itself in tangible work. The artist's psyche is at work influencing this inspiration in ways consciously and unconsciously as the work moves toward its completion. Although I did not sit down to compose a piece that was an expression of what I was experiencing, the emotional upheaval of the events above influenced the composition you will hear. I believe life has an intrinsic influence on the work an artist produces and this piece is no exception. Korby Sears, Water for Pistons Water for Pistons was written in reaction to a story told to me by a mechanical engineer a few years ago. The story went like this: in the early 60's, an engineer invented an auto engine that was fueled by water. Its only by-product was vapor steam. The inventor approached several companies with the interest of selling the rights. He was eventually approached by a consortium of the Big Three automakers, who paid an exorbitant amount for the rights and specifications of the engine. After purchasing the licensing, the companies placed the blueprints in a safe-deposit box, where it has languished ever since. Meanwhile, pollution continues to mount, the Greenhouse Effect increases, etc. When the mechanical engineer told me this story, I immediately recognized it for what it was: the urban legend of the water engine (best dramatized/satirized by David Mamet in his 1978 play Water Engine). I had heard the story many times before. However, this mechanical engineer - an otherwise reasonable and well-educated man in his mid-40s, with a wife and kids - truly believed what he was telling me. Instead of laughing at his naiveté, I found his boyish excitement to be inspiring. An antiquated but optimistic faith in technology, straight from the pre-pollution dawn of the Industrial Age. This story continued to reverberate with me in the summer of 2001, when I got a job on Blake Island, an idyllic, deer-populated state park just 8 miles west of Seattle. The lovely isolated setting was itself a nod to the pre-pollution dawn of the Industrial Age. Unfortunately, the work left me little time for music. However I did get about 3 free hours a day, which I usually spent on the beach. One day on the beach, I read two things that piqued my interest: apparently the eternally-impoverished Schubert never actually owned a piano, and simply wrote his work out on paper and then practiced the pieces at night on café pianos; and Debussy encouraged his students to compose away from the piano as much as possible. I decided to write a string quartet depicting that fictional glorious day, when the Water Engine is finally unveiled to an enthusiastic public in a ribbon-cutting ceremony. I began writing on the beach, using only paper, choosing certain harmonies on intuition without hearing them first on any instrument. I would check my work at night on piano. While some harmonic choices clearly didn't work, many others surprisingly did. Several chord structures were obviously choices that I would not have made had I been relying on a keyboard for writing. Tonight's performance of Water for Pistons is arranged for two clarinets and bassoon, part of a yearlong mission to get to know the clarinet better by writing for it as much as possible. In keeping with the harmonic spirit in which the piece was composed, this trio arrangement also presented the challenge of paring down a quartet arrangement - which also originally contained a generous amount of double-stops - to only its three most relevant elements/notes.