Robert Carl

digitally retunable piano

Composer's note: My whole approach to harmony over the past 15 years has been to find models that evoke processes and results similar to the flow and products of nature. I do not of course think that art equals or surpasses nature, only that the two exist symbiotically, art being a sort of "parallel universe" that helps us to understand, interpret and ultimately engage more fully with our world. This work attempts to bring that interaction into the sound itself, in a manner that to this point I've been unable to achieve. I am grateful to Aron Kallay for his willingness to enter into the process of the piece's development with his instrument, a fruit of technology that even a decade back was inconceivable. While writing this work in the very "sound-shadow" of the rhythms of the Mediterranean Sea (just outside my studio window), I could not help but be influenced by the presence of deep, "tidal" rhythms. Thus, a four movement structure emerged that suggests an "Elements" suite--water, earth, air, and fire. In addition, the final movement serves as a summation-coda, where elements of the previous movements rapidly intercut between one another, and there is a sense of compression (as well as the most frequent rate of Region change). It ends in a consummation that leaves only a few floating ashes.