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The History of Rock

composition for solo piano

(Recording at https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/http-dorothyker-staff-shef-ac-uk-portfolio)

This was requested by pianist Nicolas Hodges, who has commissioned works from most major living composers, including Birtwistle, Ferneyhough, Carter and Sciarrino. The first performance was in a solo recital at the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse in July 2008.

It explores a multi-faceted trope the composer identifies as her ‘threshold gesture’, manifesting as a variously-formulated pairing of a single pitch (initium) with a cluster chord (aeternum). The motif embodies the experience of apprehending infinity as characterised by Zeno’s paradoxes, the apprehension of which exposes the threshold of our ability to conceive the infinite extensibility and/or divisibility of the universe. The note accompanying the work elaborates: ‘At the horizon of infinity we encounter an essential tension between micro-macro, inner-outer, dividual-individual, measurable-uncountable, atomisation-multiplication, iambic-trochaic. We taste the extreme spatial dimensions characterised by these opposing directions, until impossibility exhausts us.’ The order and durational relationship between the two attacks is subject to non-terminal, permutational variation as an analogy for infinite division. The piano itself represents a further dimension of this impossibility due to the fixed nature of the sound production by the striking of hammers against strings tuned to the tempered 12-note scale, the sense of ‘going in’ to the sound spectrally becomes a matter of dependence on the virtuosity of the performer in controlling the subtleties of the tone and resultant overtones. At the same time, the nature of the piano as a percussion instrument capable of the utmost precision of articulation while possessing the potential for enormous resonance creates an opposition of extremes that are likewise exploited in the piece. The piece is seen by the composer to be of itself a 'theory of consciousness', in that it attempts to grasp, in multiple dimensions, something of the essential nature of consciousness.