Anatomy of Rhythm

Percussion instruments might be the most challenging group of all instruments for which to write. First, if you don't write for marimba, vibraphone or other pitched instruments, you can't write the melodies or harmonies that normally attach us to music on an emotional level. Second, each instrument has several different ways of being played and therefore ways of creating the sound - which creates as many different ways of notation.

So, careful listening is mandatory. With the vast majority of percussive instruments non-pitched and single-toned, all possible sounds one instrument can produce must be investigated, and then used originally and creatively.

When you compose for many genres, from live concert to film, you become comfortable and knowledgeable with percussive instruments from around the world. Besides the obvious effect of using certain world instruments in a geographic aspect in a movie, like Djembe for a movie playing in Africa, percussion is mostly used as a source of energy and ethno feeling to addition with the traditional instruments of the orchestra.

With Anatomy of Rhythm I wanted to create a different kind of percussion duo, something that showed percussion in a different light.

After weeks of research and unsatisfying experiments, I still hadn't found the right sound. I decided to find a different kind of input: location. An approach I was sure about was to surround the audience with the instruments from different five places. I wanted the audience be in the music, hear and feel it from different locations, and always wonder where the sound will be next coming from. The music had to have the ability to travel, with players changing places.

To start, I decided generally which instruments would be located where, and how they would interact with each other. Because I only had certain instruments in certain parts of the room I had to carefully determine when to use them and if I wanted players to go to another group, they needed to be able to continue the flow of the music with portable instruments.

After the basic rules for the piece had been mapped out, I continued to experiment with the certain groups in the room, to see where they would lead me. The final initial idea and inspiration for the piece though came from a totally different field.

At the time I was reading about music psychology, neurology and music therapy, interests I've carried throughout my life. One sentence by Novalis caught my eye: “Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is musical solution.”

That lit up my little neurons. I finally felt the bigger picture. I continued to explore the field of neurology, British neurologist Oliver Sacks, who described the connection between music and neurology and how he used certain music to improve certain neurological problems like dementia, Alzheimer.

My interest was not that of over-simplified music cure (e.g., “Just listen to this and you won't have depression”). My interest instead was to reflect a certain illness through music.

I wasn't sure at that time if I would be truly able to translate disease into music, but I focused my research on schizophrenia and schwindelsucht (an illness in which the patient constantly makes jokes and use like-sounding words in different contexts). I then created parameters on what the music would have to reflect.

That led to the title “Anatomy of Rhythm” as a connection to the anatomy of the human body and the dissection of rhythm, heard from different sites.
This created the idea for the 1. movement, Rhythmnesis, from the medical procedure anamnesis in which one investigates the patient's past and present.

The 2. movement, Feed-back, is connected to the concept of atoms. As atoms vibrate, everything in and around us vibrates too, in its very own rhythm. And so, in some way, we are playing and listening every day to each other in very subtle music and sound, even though the frequency is such that we can not consciously recognize.

Shizorhythmia, the 3. movement, takes into account the different personalities one human can exhibit, often in total competition with each other. The personalities might share common ground but react very differently to a given situation. This movement is all about connection and disconnection. It therefore plays a lot with sound placement, with music physically moving in the room from left to right as if through the brain's
left and right hemispheres, in a constant competition.

In the 4. movement, Witzelsucht, two main musical ideas address the uncontrolled situation of making constant jokes. One is a short motif, instantly capable of transforming from melody to mere accompaniment, from accompaniment to harmony for new melodies. The other concept is a harmonic structure which disorients you in time and place. The tempo overall is very fast, so it never leaves room to take a breath.

The goal of “Anatomy of Rhythm” is to guide the audience to a new sense of the vast capabilities of sound and music. My wish for this piece is to open a new door in the world of percussive music, which is already so interesting, to expand appreciation of its inherent versatility.

Duration

15´00

Instruments

Percussion Duo

Gema

10597175

Premiere

2009-09-11 in Studio Z in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Musicians: Janus Percussion
www.januspercussion.com