The Bleak, Disconsolate Pulchritude (2014)

The Bleak, Disconsolate Pulchritude (2014) for percussion quartet and optional electronicist (feedback)

Published by Kreating SounD Duration: 11:20

Notes

The Bleak, Disconsolate Pulchritude is a quintet composed for the Casper College Percussion Group and completed on November 28, 2014 in Casper, Wyoming. The work is scored for 16 spoxe and feedback. Spoxe are circular aluminum frames that come from tunable drums called roto toms, which can be from six to eighteen inches in diameter. The feedback is accomplished with two to three microphones (Shure SM57, SM58, or equivalent) that are each plugged into small guitar amps (10 to 20 watts each). The composition’s title was inspired by the vast Wyoming landscape, and is also fitting to the sound quality (timbre, envelope, pitch) of the spoxe, which have a mellow, bell-like tone. The composition is notated using proportional notation for each of the five parts; there is no score, as the five parts have a relationship determined by each of the five performers. This sort of organization of parts without a score is what the composer, Stuart Saunders Smith, calls “music of simultaneity.”

Recordings

Outsider In : chamber works for percussion https://roncoulter.bandcamp.com/album/outsider-in-chamber-works-for-percussion

=Performances

April 30, 2015; Wheeler Concert Hall, Casper College (Casper, WY), World Premiere, Performers: Casper College Percussion Group directed by Ron Coulter