Synchronies

MUSIC FOR SMALL ENSEMBLES

James Dashow composer

Lucia Bova harp
Mario Buffa violin
David Bursack viola
Paolo Ravaglia bass clarinet
Daniele Roi piano
Manuel Zurria flutes
HELIX! New Music Ensemble | Paul Hoffmann conductor

Release Date: September 10, 2021
Catalog #: RR8060
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Chamber
Electroacoustic
Electronic
Piano
Violin

SYNCHRONIES, James Dashow’s second double album on Ravello Records, offers a selection of the composer’s work for traditional instruments with and without electronic sounds. His approach to these two musical resources combines the intimacy and flexibility of beautifully designed chamber music with full scale sonorous constructions: some achieved by finely textured orchestrations of the classical instrumental ensemble, others by the symphonic use of rich electronic timbres that are characteristic of the composer’s music. Dashow’s unique sound is immediately recognizable, enhanced by his ground-breaking ideas on the spatialization of sound, where the location and movement of musical events in space are now fundamental elements of his compositional practice. The performers in these pieces are true virtuosi of contemporary art music; their artistry and subtle understanding of these works yield deeply expressive interpretations that resonate with both listeners and performers alike.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
DISC ONE
01 First Tangent to the Given Curve: I. James Dashow Daniele Roi, piano 5:48
02 First Tangent to the Given Curve: II. James Dashow Daniele Roi, piano 7:11
03 First Tangent to the Given Curve: III. James Dashow Daniele Roi, piano 6:08
04 A Sheaf of Times: I. James Dashow HELIX! New Music Ensemble, Rutgers University | Paul Hoffmann, conductor; Michael Locati, violin; Jeanne Jaubert, cello; Christine Hansen, flutes; Christopher Sumner, clarinets; Gregg Giannascoli, percussion; Fran Snyder, harp; Lynn Raley, piano; Walter Morales, assistant 10:30
05 A Sheaf of Times: II. James Dashow HELIX! New Music Ensemble, Rutgers University | Paul Hoffmann, conductor; Michael Locati, violin; Jeanne Jaubert, cello; Christine Hansen, flutes; Christopher Sumner, clarinets; Gregg Giannascoli, percussion; Fran Snyder, harp; Lynn Raley, piano; Walter Morales, assistant 3:09
06 A Sheaf of Times: III. James Dashow HELIX! New Music Ensemble, Rutgers University | Paul Hoffmann, conductor; Michael Locati, violin; Jeanne Jaubert, cello; Christine Hansen, flutes; Christopher Sumner, clarinets; Gregg Giannascoli, percussion; Fran Snyder, harp; Lynn Raley, piano; Walter Morales, assistant 5:24
07 Messages from Ortigia James Dashow Manuel Zurria, bass and alto flutes; Paolo Ravaglia, bass clarinet; David Bursack, viola; Lucia Bova, harp 17:03
DISC TWO
01 Mnemonics James Dashow Mario Buffa, violin 18:08
02 Oro, Argento & Legno James Dashow Manuel Zurria, flute, alto flute, piccolo 17:12
03 Archimedes Suite James Dashow James Dashow 25:07

DISC 1

First Tangent to the Given Curve
for piano and computer
© Edizioni Musicali Via Veneto (S.I.A.E.) Rome, Italy
Recorded 1996-1997 at Studio Lead in Rome, Italy
Recording Engineer Marco Zumpano
Stereo mixdown from the quadraphonic original

A Sheaf of Times, septet
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, harp, and percussion
Recorded March 21, 1997 at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County in Baltimore MD
Recording Engineer Mike Cerri; Digital editing Antonio Giordano, Studio Carpe Diem in Rome, Italy
©1998 MZQ Edizioni Musicali (S.I.A.E.) in Rome, Italy
Commissoned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard Universty; Recording grant as part of the Fromm commission.

Messages From Ortigia
for bass flute (also alto), bass clarinet, viola, harp, and hexaphonic electronic sounds
Recorded August 2005. Recording, Digital Editing, and Mixing James Dashow
Expanded stereo mixdown from the hexaphonic original
© James Dashow (S.I.A.E.) Rome, Italy
Commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association of Boston

DISC 2

Mnemonics
for violin and quadraphonic electronic sounds
Recorded December 1988 in Studio C, RCA-BMG Ariola in Rome, Italy
Production Engineer Paolo Venditti
Digital sound synthesis realized at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (C.S.C.), Università di Padova; Post-synthesis mixing with system ICMS (G. Tisato); Stereo mixdown from the quadraphonic original
© 1989 B. Schott’s Sohne International; Courtesy WERGO\Schott Music & Media, GmbH, Mainz, Germany; Commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (USA)

Oro, Argento & Legno
for flute (alto flute, piccolo) and quadraphonic electronic sounds
Recorded October 11-12, 1996, Studio Lead in Rome, Italy
Recording Engineer Marco Zumpano
Digital sound synthesis realized at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (C.S.C.), Università di Padova; Post-synthesis mixing with system ICMS (G. Tisato); © 1990 Edizioni Semar (S.I.A.E.) Roma-Rotterdam
Stereo mixdown from the quadraphonic original

ARCHIMEDES, Suite from the planetarium opera
for hexaphonic electronic and pre-recorded acoustic sounds
Composed and realized between 2000-2008; the Suite was made from selections from the opera in January 2021; Digital editing, mixing James Dashow
Expanded stereo mixdown from the hexaphonic original
© James Dashow (S.I.A.E.) Rome, Italy

Photographs:
(Cover and Disc 1) © copyright Kit Day
(Interior and Disc 2) Gary Meredith

General Manager of Audio & Sessions Jan Košulič
Audio Director, Adtl. Mastering Lucas Paquette
Mastering Shaun Michaud

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw
A&R Director Brandon MacNeil

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Sara Warner

Artist Information

James Dashow

Composer

James Dashow has had commissions, awards and grants from the Bourges International Festival of Experimental Music, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Linz Ars Electronica Festival, the Fromm Foundation, the Biennale di Venezia, the USA National Endowment for the Arts, RAI (Italian National Radio), the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, Il Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte (Montepulciano, Italy), the Koussevitzky Foundation, Prague Musica Nova, and the Harvard Musical Association of Boston. In 2000, he was awarded the prestigious Prix Magistere at the 30th Festival International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques in Bourges.

Notes

The more time passes, the more I am fascinated with putting together musical ideas that are on the surface seemingly unrelated, to see how they effect and transform each other, how their interactions generate form-building energies. The tensions from their contrasts, the rhythms within each event, how each idea unfolds and develops, the rhythms with which the events succeed or interrupt each other… all these elements form the dynamic of my work. They are ensembles of things that generate a world of complexities, intertwinings, symmetries and asymmetries, turbulence, provocations, moods, much like the multifarious life experiences—both day to day and in the long run. The result is a unique form, a completed blend, rather like a reflection of a series (a collection) of events in life that you perceive as a local whole. The relationship between the piano and the computer generated electronic sounds is, on the other hand, rigorously worked out with extreme precision. The pitch structure provides the basis for the sounds, or vice versa a certain kind of sound yields the basis for the intervals and the notes. And they, too, mutually influence each other. A kind of cooperative “a due.” The electronic sounds were generated entirely using the MUSIC30 program for digital sound synthesis running on the Spirit30 accelerator board for PC, by Sonitech Intl (Wellesley MA). The title of the work comes from an essay by Michel Serres, which captures rather nicely the sense of the music, the sense of the composition:

“Here is the complement of the model. Given a flow of atoms, by the declination, the first tangent to the given curve, and afterward by the vortex, a relatively stable thing is constituted. It stays in disequilibrium, ready to break, then to die and disappear but nonetheless resistant by its established conjunctions, between the torrential flow from the upstream currents and the river flowing downstream to the sea. It is a stationary turbulence.”

— Michel Serres, on Lucretius

A Sheaf of Times takes its title from a Michel Serres essay, The Origin of Language: Biology, Information Theory and Thermodynamics: “The living organism, ontogenesis and phylogenesis combined, is of all times. This does not mean that it is eternal, but rather that it is an original complex, woven out of all the different times that our intellect subjects to analysis or that our spatial environment tolerates… All the temporal vectors possessing a directional arrow are here, in this place, arranged in the shape of a star. What is an organism? A sheaf of times. What is a living system? A bouquet of times.”

The many images in this paragraph suggest ways of listening. Certainly the composer is giving us a work of many times, that is, of many tempi; but also of many simultaneous times, a rubbing up against each other of different tempi, of different rates of speed in which the phrases, lines, fragments, even larger chunks of the work all unfold. Again following the Serres paragraph, we can hear “an original complex, woven out of all the different times” which is just the kind of weaving of lines and energies in time, with times, that makes up this piece. The first part is, approximately, several crescendos, or several overlapped beginnings that grow into a fullness. Starting from the barest whisper of percussion sound, the gradual wave-like increase in dynamic, the accumulation of tension and evolution of complexity, all proceed toward an extended area of maximum energy; yet rather than discharging this energy the music spirals up unexpectedly into the high registers and disappears, as if to say “not yet, wait.” Something else has emerged that doesn’t so much command our attention as to nudge our awareness gently in another direction. The second part is that other direction, another bouquet of times. The multiple lines and complex phrasing of the previous part is replaced by a succession of deliciously orchestrated chordal phrases that provide a needed calm. It is energy contrast on the largest formal scale. Dashow’s sense of ensemble timbre, refined by years of work with electronic sound, is here on full display: the subtle shadings of chords, closely voiced or spread wide in a spatial transparency, yield a low-keyed flow of energy that generates a form of rich repose, while somehow keeping a sense that, suspended in the background, the powerful energy from part 1 is ready to re-emerge, now tempered by the shape and line of part 2. Several moments of timbral magic are in the delicate harp passages set within the surrounding chords in winds, strings and the haunting quality of a bowed vibraphone.

The third part turns on immediately, a kind of in medias res as the delayed energy of part 1 is suddenly there, not yet full blast, but rather in a more lean and sinewy form. The movement is more playful, with duets and trio groupings of the instruments keeping the line and counter-lines fresh with new intricacies. Conductor Paul Hoffmann masterfully paces the momentum, balance and interaction of these sub-ensembles. In keeping with the general motion of the whole piece there is at last a long final build-up, energies reach a critical level, and the prolonged climactic moment is dense with multiple lines and rhythmic configurations (yet perfectly transparent to the ear). The work, the form, the shape, is complete. A brief moment of falling-off, almost a complement to the gentle side-tracking at the end of part 1, brings A Sheaf of Times to a finely balanced close.

— James Dashow

Messages from Ortigia is based on the first version of the structure of the Prologue, part I, from my planetarium opera, Archimedes. This particular way of doing things wasn’t working in the context of the opera, but it was quite clear to me that it could be successfully adapted for instruments and electronic sounds. Along came a commission from the Boston Harvard Musical Association, whose president at the time was Nicholas Anagnostis, a man devoted to music and to the promotion of contemporary art music in particular. And so Messages from Ortigia got under way.

Ortigia is the island right up against the Sicilian city of Syracuse, Archimedes’ home town. What little real fact is known about this extraordinary man suggests that he probably lived on Ortigia. The notion of “messages” comes from the visit I paid to Ortigia and Syracuse during the composition of Archimedes to get a feel for his environment. I found myself immediately immersed in a wonderous mix of the ancient and the modern, the latter of course being the everyday objects and happenings of our own time, while the former was felt everywhere, a subtle yet powerful undertow of the magnificent civilization that was the ancient Grecian Syracuse in the 3rd century BCE. Looking along the coast just to the north of the city was to glimpse Ulysses’ beaches unchanged and the timeless Mediterranean Sea that was the birthplace of so much Western culture. It was like being transported to the origin of our cultural roots. It occurred to me that there was still much to be absorbed or remembered from those extraordinary times and the people who lived them, important messages to be deciphered that are vital to our own lives.

The general form of Ortigia is multi-sectional with varying degrees of energy, which by the time of the composition of this piece had become my standard method for creating an overall structure. It is played without pause but contains large scale contrasts between sections that, again, approximate the idea of separate “movements,” where each section has its own developmental dynamic of varying intensities. Now I had 4 instruments at my disposal for which to design electronic sounds, creating some interesting challenges to match timbrally one way or another the various combinations of these instruments, in pairs, in threes, and all four, besides solo passages for each instrument. There was also the spatial contrast of 4 soloists in the front with the placement and movement of the electronic sounds in the hexaphonic space that surrounds the audience.

The spatialization of the sounds into 6 channels, a significant step beyond my previous work in the quadraphonic configuration, added a new dimension to the composition, and as such contributed in new ways to the kind of composed energy levels that I used to develop the piece. Spatial movement has its own energy, determined by velocity, direction, depth perception etc., which are here combined with or contrasted to such energy generating elements as rhythm, dynamic variations, and especially the pitch-timbral integration characteristic of my Dyad System. The interactions of all these elements create the multi-faceted form of the piece, concluding with a full and richly sustained timbre in which the instruments participate quietly as timbral partners to the sound.

The recording here is a stereophonic mixdown with enhanced or widened stereo images that attempt to capture in part this fascinating aspect of physical space used for musically expressive purposes.

— James Dashow

Mnemonics was originally commissioned by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for Matthew Raimondi, the extraordinary New York violinist who at the time (1981) was first violinist for the Pro Arte Quartet. Because of a series of circumstances well beyond anybody’s control, Mario Buffa premiered the piece in Italy followed by multiple opportunities for subsequent performances. The masterful recording here is the result of his deep understanding of the work thanks to his experience with the many live performances. His timing is perfect, and we were even able to do the recording without a click track!

Mnemonics was a sort of break-through piece for me. I had been developing my dyad synthesis techniques and had reached a point of being able to achieve a good deal of timbral variety, the pitch organization aspects of my Dyad System had begun to bear fruit, and the new pair of converters at the University of Padova Computer Center gave me the chance to work in the quadraphonic environment, my very first use of space as a compositional element. All of this came together in Mnemonics for the first time. The work makes use of contrasting textures that are at the same time closely related formally through the carefully organized pitch (as dyads) structures which in turn furnish the generating dyads for the electronic sounds.

The electronic sounds are designed to interact in a variety of ways with the characteristic sound of the violin, and this lends to the music a structural-expressive unity that is significantly different from the usual interactions of soloist and accompanying ensemble.

The work is built around varying degrees of tension and relaxation, or energy levels, that complement each other in coming together to generate the form of the piece as a whole. These contrasting energy levels very roughly correspond to “movements” in a traditional piece, but the means of developing each energy section is quite unlike the traditional idea of “development.” In fact, each section has its own rhythm of contrasting-complementary energy levels that contribute to a multi-level way of musical conception and, more importantly, musical perception.

The last section is the first of what has become a characteristic of my music, a sustained meditative, somewhat nostalgic, tone of voice where the interaction between violin and electronic sound projects an expressivity that takes the listener well beyond the work’s structural-function foundations.

— James Dashow

With Oro, Argento & Legno (Gold, Silver & Wood), we enter a very different world. The work is in 4 sections, played without pause; the flutist plays piccolo and alto flute besides the regular instrument, and the electronic sounds are carefully designed to fit the timbral differences of these three instruments. It is a virtuoso work, making intense demands on the soloist. Technically, the work requires speed and accuracy in executing wide leaps both in pitch and in dynamic; expressively, the wide variety of gestures in the piece, often juxtaposed, require the soloist to change mood and expressive intent often and suddenly in order to create successfully the work’s emotional complexity. And throughout, the soloist must maintain perfect control over the timbre of his instrument to match and to blend with the electronic sounds.

No less than the flute part, the electronic sounds are virtuosity of a high order. The tremendous timbral variety provides the flutist with sharply contrasting expressive contexts ranging from the radically austere texture for the alto flute (which, notwithstanding the extreme reduction to sparse events, creates an exceptional sense of spatial depth a deeply moving moment in the original quadraphonic environment), to the multiple supersonic lines for the piccolo punctuated with unexpected stops and starts, to the rich symphonic fullness of the finale. It is the unmistakable sound of Dashow’s electronic music, coming at us here like an ebullient timbral kaleidoscope, full of fantasy, invention and discovery.

Oro, Argento & Legno has become something of a classic since its composition in 1987-88, originally for Florentine flutist Marzio Conti whose three instruments were made, respectively, of Gold (flute), Silver (alto flute) and Wood (piccolo). Because of its virtuoso requirements, flutists around the world have adopted the work for showcase performances.

Manuel Zurria meets all the work’s challenges magnificently in this recording. Some of the highlights of his interpretation are the energetic yet subtle shaping of the complex flute line in the first section, his rich sensuous alto flute tone in section 2, and his marvelously lively piccolo performance in the super high-speed, almost bop-like, section 3.

— James Dashow

The Archimedes Suite from Dashow’s planetarium opera Archimedes is a selection of many of the most characteristic musical moments of the work and follows the actual sequence of scenes and events of the original, with but one exception: a fragment inserted out of order for compositional necessities.

The opera’s quite exceptional timbral variety and brilliance of musical invention is here presented in a compact form that emphasizes the fluctuations in dramatic tension generated by the continuing transformations, evolutions, and stark contrasts of musical ideas. The principal characters are all there: we hear the opening of the opera, Marcellus’ immediately identifiable chamber ensemble, followed by the eerie surrealistic “Demiurge” featuring Antonio Politano’s electronically manipulated recorders. Then come extracts from Archimedes’ EUREKA! moment introducing his own identifying music realized throughout on a variety of guitars. This is followed by the music for the “mechanics ballet” in which several mimes act out physically some of Archimedes’ discoveries. Finally, we hear the dramatic confrontation of the people of Syracuse begging Archimedes to use his knowledge to protect their—his—city from the Roman invaders. This leads to the climactic moment in “Archimedes at War” when the mathematician invokes the overwhelming power of the sun through his geometric inventions that are no longer just abstract mathematics, but horrifyingly lethal instruments of death.

The suite closes out with the deeply moving electronic sounds that accompany Marcellus’ muted epilogue, his immense sadness in realizing that the opportunity for a widespread Roman peace had been lost to a war gone out of control. Perhaps he understands as well that such knowledge as possessed by Archimedes and human geniuses like him will forever be distorted by the cruelly brutish nature of mankind, until human beings learn to tame themselves. And perhaps Archimedes, at last, knew that too, just before his death at the hands of the Demiurge. The opera seems to ask if, even after our thousands of years of building civilizations, we will ever understand that.

The orchestral sounds were pre-recorded instrument samples subjected to electronic elaboration allowing the composer to create some unique timbral events as well as a large number of musical articulations not physically possible on the original live instruments. The electronic sounds were realized in the composer’s studio using a variety of synthesis and signal processing techniques. In the original opera, the hexaphonic spatialization of the sounds adds significantly to the drama, allowing the audience to feel as if they are inside the musical action, rather than outside spectators. The complete opera, in an enhanced stereo mixdown, has been recorded on a NeumaRecords triple-CD.

The technical framework in no way dictates the stylistic or structural conception. I find that working on two levels simultaneously, the foreground of the immediately perceived inharmonic sounds, and the background structure in terms of generating dyads, is particularly suitable for a hierarchic kind of structuring, and I am irrationally drawn to and totally convinced by that kind of musical thinking. To me, complex hierarchic structures in musical composition, and in other kinds of human creation as well, for that matter, are what give a work vitality, a renewed sense of significance each time you hear it. The listener needn’t be consciously aware of the levels of structure, but it is the composer’s responsibility to communicate that complexity in such a way that the listener’s intuition can grab onto it. The composer himself may be only intuitively aware of what he’s doing, but his is a trained intuition, or if you prefer, an experienced intuition, that sets about creating opportunities for the realization of those kinds of structures. I’m not by any means advocating that structure is the beall and endall of musical composition. What I am very much assuming is that it all begins with a musical idea or conception in which the composer’s imagination sees opportunities for various kinds of development. Look at the possibilities in Diabelli’s little waltz, for example.

From what you’ve said so far, it’s clear that your concentrating on building musical structure in terms of dyads is a direct result of using pairs of pitches to generate inharmonic sounds. Which, then, comes first in your music, the electronic sounds or the dyad structure?

Well, after many years experience, I know which dyads produce which kinds of sounds, and in order to get the sounds I want, I know I have to write certain dyads; on the other hand, in developing the dyad structure I’m continually moving into new timbral possibilities which suggest further ideas and ways of going about developing or unfolding the composition, so it’s sort of a “chicken or the egg” situation. Which is where I want to be anyway, the timbre and pitch structure so well integrated that they are totally interdependent.

I know that you’ve been developing a system for working out the precise details of your musical structure in terms of dyads. Would you describe how you developed the system and its major features?

That could be a long answer, but I’ll try and boil it down to the essentials. In my pieces from MNEMONICS for violin & computer onward, or say 1982 onward, I began to make use of an interesting phenomenon: I could derive enormous variety of sound from the same small group of pitches, merely by reusing those same pitches in different dyadic associations; that is with pitches A, B, C, D, E, F I have available the dyads AB, CD, EF; AC, BE, DF; AD, BF, CE; etc. not to mention the fact that, as far as the generated sound spectrum is concerned, there is an enormous difference between, for example, a minor 7th as a generating dyad, and the same two pitches articulated as an octave and a minor 7th, or, for that matter, the same two pitches used as a major 9th, etc. …

MNEMONICS uses this property as a means for prolonging a group of notes on a local level; SEQUENCE SYMBOLS (for computer solo) is the first piece to use this property in a rigorous but limited way as the basis for an entire composition. Between those two works came the computer pieces IN WINTER SHINE, realized at M.I.T. in 1983, which extends my earlier tentative explorations of the idea to cover entire sections of the piece, and SONGS FROM A SPIRAL TREE a non computer work for soprano, flute and harp (a protein piece, as Lansky would say), each of whose 5 parts explores a variety of approaches to dyad construction and manipulation independent of their electronic sound generative function. It was during SPIRAL TREE that I arrived at the full generalization of the system, and in fact the reason SEQUENCE SYMBOLS is a rigorous application of these ideas is because work on SPIRAL TREE was interrupted by the commission that eventually produced SEQUENCE SYMBOLS. ORO, ARGENTO & LEGNO for flute and computer is a full blown use of the dyad system, aided in large part by my having become totally fascinated with the Prolog programming language which turned out to be the exactly right tool for developing the considerable complexities of the system…

The dyad system operates on the interaction of two major and complementary principles: given a group of notes ( I use 6 at a time) you can:

1. keep the pitch content constant while changing the intervals (the dyads) by which the pitches are articulated, or 2. keep the interval (dyad) content constant while changing the pitches that articulate them.

So, with my 6note groups, divided into three intervals (dyads), I can rearrange the pitches into 15 (sometimes less) different dyad combinations, using principle 1 above. Each of these 15 I call a group. Each group, by principle 2, can assume upwards of 38 different forms, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on symmetry, each of which I call a type. Each type in its turn can be subjected to principle 1 to find its 15 groups, each of which can generate types, and so on. Oh, yes, don’t forget that each type has 12 transpositions, so I am dealing with an enormous reservoir of musical material for each group, typically 456 6note conglomerates. It is convenient to load several batches of 456 into a single database for elaboration within a Prolog environment. Each type will have its characteristic sound quality, its flavor as I like to think of it, and each group will have its characteristic means of articulation: there’s an enormous musical difference if 6 notes are articulated as a major third, major second and tritone, or as a minor second, a major second and a perfect fourth. And more obviously there will be even greater musical differences between a minor third, major second and minor second played as CEb, EF#, C#D, and played as F#A, EbF, CDb, not to mention such variants as whether the minor 3rd is played as a major 6th, the minor 2nd as an octave and a minor 9th, etc. Order of articulation of the dyads is not fixed, on the contrary: since the order can affect how and if the groups are perceived as units, the possibility of changing the order to suit particular local or global situations is of extreme importance.

Obviously you will have different types generating identical groups, and different groups generating identical types, but this is ideal for setting up webs of group or type progressions and, in a sense, “modulating” from one group’s area to another’s via a type in common. There are a lot of potential parallels to the power and subtlety of tonal organization without in any way invoking or referring to diatonicism and tonal functioning.

You refer often to perception, how things sound, notwithstanding your emphasis on building structure. Do you see any conflict in these two aspects of your work?

Not at all. In fact, as I mentioned before, the musical idea is the real origin of it, a hearing of something which just has to be expressed. My way of using the dyad system captures for me the way I hear, and it also permits me to explore in a coherent fashion the potential expression that is present in musical ideas. My dyad system is fundamentally an ears first approach, or bottom up, as they say in the digital world. The advantage to working within a system is that you can consciously develop those complex hierarchical structures which create opportunities for musical intuition to expand. The structural aspect of things can go a long way toward eliminating that sense of arbitrariness which is all too evident in so many purely “intuitive” pieces, as well as forcing the composer to look critically at the products of his intuition, his musical fantasy. There can be as much fantasy, invention and intuition in the creating of a dynamic, organic structure as there is in the imagining of purely musical ideas. The best pieces, I think, will always exhibit a high degree of blend of structure and idea: in fact, the two will be so intertwined that the idea will seem structure and the structure will seem idea.

Wouldn’t so rigorously defined a system tend to produce the same kind of music, that is, wouldn’t anybody who adopts the dyad system wind up sounding like Dashow?

By no means. Anybody who sounds like me might perhaps be adopting my style as a point of departure, but that has nothing to do with the system. It should be emphasized that my dyad system in no way constrains me to write in any particular style: it is definitely not ideology, dogma or religion! It is a very flexible general framework, or ground, or foundation if you like, that can provide a coherent basis for generating groups of notes whose relationships depend only on the composer’s powers of invention, and which may be to any degree of complexity the composer desires within the framework, exactly parallel to working within classic systems such as tonality or serialism. It will be, after all, the kind of articulation, rhythm shaping, phrasing, sense of timing… those sensual qualities that are so perceptually dominant, yet so impossible to pin down with any precision… that will determine the composer’s style and specific approach. The dyad system can stimulate a variety of ways of hearing and making music through its possibilities and, equally as important, through its limitations. It is my feeling that coming to grips with the basic principles of the system can produce many different kinds of viable musical structures and, most importantly, many different kinds of aesthetic, or styles.

I take it, then, that the instrumental parts of such pieces as MNEMONICS and ORO, ARGENTO & LEGNO reflect one level of composition, that is the dyad structure, while the computer part is the development and elaboration of that structure through the inharmonic chordspectra.

Exactly. Those pieces as well as the earlier pieces, A WAY OF STAYING, SECOND VOYAGE and EFFETTI COLLATERAL! all work with the same general principle of “inharmonic harmonizations” of specific dyads (or trichords in some cases) in the soloist’s part. Each piece organizes the pitches differently, each has its own rhythm of development, selection and mixing of sounds derived from the dyad structure. Generally, the soloist articulates the pitch structure and its development, phrases are constructed in such a way as to confirm or not common tone relationships between successive groupings and especially to maintain the sense of long line that unifies the work despite its often abrupt textural changes or interruptions; the electronic sounds are generated by the dyads, many of the specific sounds chosen are those that create particularly interesting blends with the solo instrument, and in fact since certain sounds go better with, say, the flute than with a violin, the pitches must be so structured as to permit the emergence of those dyads that generate the appropriate sounds…

… which would ensure another level of integration, the fact that the live solo instrument’s timbre directly influences the compositional structure via the electronic sounds.

That’s right, and in fact while ORO, ARGENTO & LEGNO is an extremely rigorous application of both the dyad system and the generating dyad principle for the electronic sounds, the flutist has to play 3 different instruments whose timbres are obviously related but significantly different, and these differences are reflected in the greater variety of sounds in the piece as a whole. But I think that the perception that the sounds are directly derived from the pitch structure of the flute part provides a strong sense of unity, or better, of belonging together, across the differences.

Your pieces with instruments seem to have somewhat traditional forms, notwithstanding the newness of your timbres and your approach to structural integration: large sections of contrasting tempi that suggest the classic or romantic concerto; but your pieces for comp ter solo are much freer, less rigid, if I may say so, in formal design why is this?

Well, for the instrumental pieces I like to take into consideration the presence of the performer, his/her involvement in the work a sort of dialogue between me and the soloist which the soloist then interprets for the audience. In this respect I think the largescale tempo contrasts as perfected by the classic concerto has proved to be robust, viable, and still convincing. But in the classic concerto these contrasts are usually supported in some way by the structural functions of the tonal system. My dyad system produces a considerably different kind of structural functioning, and the way the familiar tempo contrasts are evolved out of, or rather integrated into, these structures has nothing whatsoever to do with the typical formal relationships you find in conventional tonal models. While you might say that the general shape of my pieces for solo acoustic instruments and computer have a sort of family resemblance to the classic forms (granduncle and grandnephew, perhaps?), the internal form of each major section is made up of a greater variety of tempo and rhythmic contrasts than you usually find in the older forms. I construct each large section with my own particular sense of pacing, development, shape and especially how the section contributes to the sense of the whole work.

How would you describe the sense or shape of your pieces?

Both MNEMONICS and ORO, ARGENTO & LEGNO have an overall shape or curve which you might imagine as high tension or concentrated energy discharging over time; but this curve is by no means a single dimensioned descent, rather there are waves of change of direction as the sense of overall energy settles to a lower level; each major section participates in or rather defines part of the curve, while the details of each section, especially its phrasing and rhythm, define the specific way in which the section functions within the fluctuating curve. Actually, the overall shape of SEQUENCE SYMBOLS is a more concentrated version of this form but with more interruptions and immediate contrasts which substitute for the always present contrast between acoustic soloist and electronic sounds.

You refer often to contrast; this is an important aspect of your musical conceptions?

Absolutely. Contrasts do several things: throw into relief various aspects of the contrasting ideas, often bringing to light surprising and interesting details; they create tensions on various levels, or in various dimensions, which can be worked out or not and how they are worked out is fundamental for the piece; contrasts suggest ambiguities which again can be resolved or left for multidimensional developments or interpretations, and so on. I think if I had to try and analytically describe my music with some sort of notion valid in the large as well as for the details, I would talk in terms of the interactions of the effects of contrasts at various levels, how they add up, what sort of energy they provide, where their implications direct the progress of the piece.

Is this all tied in some way to your systematic approach to composition?

Only indirectly. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that my approach to music is “systematic”, in the pejorative sense of the word; I am no more nor less systematic than any composer who works with tonality, serialism or the I Ching. I think it is an indication of profound musical ignorance to classify tonal music as being the great triumph of “intuitive” composition, while any effort to provide coherent control over a wider range of musical materials is considered sterile intellectualism. In fact, we are talking now of the instinctive, nonsystematic part of my work, my “intuitive” sense of form, energy, musical thought. I strongly believe that you must have a good deal of both intuition and a conscious way of developing that intuition which can lead to further intuitions which you wouldn’t have had without that development. The intuition provides the tip of the iceberg, the development of that intuition gets you a good deal of the rest of it. As I have commented elsewhere, structure without the musicalpoetic idea is sterile; but the poetic idea without structure is flaccid selfindulgence.