Rothko-Tobey Continuum (violin 1992, saxophone 1994)
digital download of saxophone version available at Amazon.com
The title Rothko-Tobey Continuum refers to the artists Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey. I have often felt that the work of these two painters was related in spirit, approaching a similar sensibility through different means: luminous floating planes in Rothko's work, and highly charged calligraphic line in Tobey's paintings. With this in mind, I have constructed the piece around two contrasting treatments of the same musical material, treatments that were inspired by, but are not imitative of the distinctive character of the paintings. There is a lyrical quality to the work of both men, in spite of the abstractness of the images that they produced--this manifests itself in the melodic line of the solo part. The taped material was generated using the algorithmic composition program M; all of the note data was generated by processing the four chords that end the piece. The work was completed in July 1992 (originally for violin and live performance system) using a Macintosh computer and a Yamaha SY99 synthesizer.
digital download of saxophone version available at Amazon.com
The title Rothko-Tobey Continuum refers to the artists Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey. I have often felt that the work of these two painters was related in spirit, approaching a similar sensibility through different means: luminous floating planes in Rothko's work, and highly charged calligraphic line in Tobey's paintings. With this in mind, I have constructed the piece around two contrasting treatments of the same musical material, treatments that were inspired by, but are not imitative of the distinctive character of the paintings. There is a lyrical quality to the work of both men, in spite of the abstractness of the images that they produced--this manifests itself in the melodic line of the solo part. The taped material was generated using the algorithmic composition program M; all of the note data was generated by processing the four chords that end the piece. The work was completed in July 1992 (originally for violin and live performance system) using a Macintosh computer and a Yamaha SY99 synthesizer.