Four Laws for Two Percussionists

Program Note:

Great works of art are typically products of strife in some form. Sometimes the strife is personal, biographical, relating to the life situation of the creator; think of Vincent Van Gogh or Beethoven. Other times, the tension centers on the process itself: how to express a concept in either inherited or newly invented forms of communication? At its most fundamental, musical composition begins with recognizing how music’s rules work. Subsequent decisions then reflect one’s particular stance toward the rules. Are they to be followed? Subverted? Refined? Flagrantly ignored? In our generalizing tendency, we like to position composers along a spectrum between rule- and pattern-based methods at one end (perhaps J.S. Bach, minimalism) and spontaneous, irreverent free forms at the other (C.P.E. Bach, Dadaism). Admittedly, this is a gross over-simplification of the matter. But even when composers intentionally try to avoid all rules and conventions, they cannot escape their influence—even if those rules offer nothing more than suggestions about what not to do.
“What are the laws that govern music?” With this question, composer-in-residence Zachary Wadsworth began the process that led to Four Laws for Two Percussionists, receiving its world premiere tonight. Wadsworth continues:

This question is at once impossible to answer and animating to consider. Music, like society, set up its own laws, whether they be of form, motive, timbre, or harmony. But, even truer to society, music regularly breaks its own rules. Ultimately, composing is the process of establishing, and then thwarting, laws. My Four Laws for Two Percussionists explores this process. First, the performers search for a musical pattern, alternating with ever-shifting pulses until a two-note motive emerges. Then, the performers spend the second movement passing the motive between them, never allowing for a single beat’s rest. In the third movement, the creative impulse takes over, and the motive grows and flowers in variation. Finally, the performers look beyond the motive, ending with explosive and vibrant new music.

Completed in summer 2015, Four Laws for Two Percussionists is dedicated to I-Jen Fang and Brian Smith, who will perform it this evening.

(c) Jason Stell