Alloy

Daniel Adams

General Info

Year: 1990
Duration: c. 7:25
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Studio4
Cost: Score and Parts - $15.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Instrumentation

Player 1: Glockenspiel
Player 2: Chimes
Player 3: Vibraphone

Program Notes

premiere: 17 October, 1990, Austin, Texas, University of Texas Percussion Ensemble, George Frock, director

Review

Alloy is a percussion trio, requiring performers at the college level, written for a most unusual instrumentation- giockenspiel, chimes, and vibraphone. By utilizing a variety of implements, including mallets of brass is used on both bells and chimes), plastic, hard rubber, hard and soft yarn, and chime hammers and a bow, this piece attempts to produce a variety of interesting metallic sonorities and expand the vocabulary of sounds normally produced on the three metallophones used. Cohesiveness in this work is largely achieved through the use of repetitious melodic patterns, which display a predilection for intervals of the major and minor second and the augmented fourth, and inversions of same, presented in both linear contrapuntal fashion and chordally. Movement and contrast are effected through mampulations of surface rhythms and texture. To build tension and generate excitement, Adams increases rhythmic movement as beat subdivisions accelerate from triplet to quadruplet sixteenths, and quadruplets change to quintuplet and sextuplet sixteenth note subdivisions. The climax of the work is a passage in which the glockenspiel has repetitous melodic patterns of quintuplet sixteenths, the chimes have quadruplet sixeenths, and the vibe part is notated in sextuplet sixteenth notes, creating the effect of numerous tolling bells Adams, in this and previous works, has revealed himself a capable composer whose writing reflects a familiarity with percussion instruments. Here, he has chosen to fuse the characteristic timbres of bells, chimes and vibes into an interesting amalgam, providing audiences the opportunity to explore an exciting new palette of colors. - John R. Rausch, April 1993

Recent Performances

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Works for Percussion by this Composer

Alloy - Percussion Trio
Ambience (Adams) - Percussion Septet
Andalusian Haiku - Percussion Duo
Between - Marimba; Flute
Camaraderie - Timpani; Percussion Septet
Collage - Multiple Percussion; Piano
Concerto for Euphonium and Percussion Quintet - Percussion Quintet; Euphonium
Dissolve - Percussion Octet
Echogenesis - Percussion Quartet
Equipoise - Multiple Percussion; Saxophone
Five Elementary Etudes - Multiple Percussion
Focus - Vibraphone; Bassoon
Isorhythmic Concerto - Multiple Percussion; Wind Ensemble
Khromas Diabolus - Percussion Quintet; Trombone
Lignumvitae - Percussion Trio
Performance Studies for Two, Volume 1 - Snare Drum
Protagonist - Tom-tom; Percussion Trio
Reverberations - Timpani
Road Traversed and Reversed - Marimba Duo
Shadow on Mist - Multiple Percussion; Flute
Shadow on Mist (Ensemble) - Percussion Quintet; Flute
Stratum - Marimba Quartet
Syzygy - Marimba; Violin
Talea - Percussion Sextet
Tamboo Bamboo - Steel Drum; Percussion Orchestra
Three Movements for Unaccompanied Marimba - Marimba
Three Subtropical Vistas - Marimba, Vibraphone, Voice
Times Two - Percussion Duo
Twilight Remembered - Multiple Percussion; Flute
Two Antiphonal Portraits - Percussion Ensemble (12)
Variation sans theme - Snare Drum
Windward Passage - Marimba, Vibraphone, String Quartet