O Time Thy Pyramids, for amplified violin, cello, and percussion
18-23' (2022) - music for modern dance
O Time Thy Pyramids was composed for new music group Musik Heute (음악오늘) and premiered Nov. 20, 2022 by contemporary dance team 괘넘치 in Seoul.
O TIME THY Pyramids
The title of this work is taken from Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Library of Babel.” In that story, the phrase “O time thy pyramids” (‘Oh tiempo tus pirámides’) is the only decipherable phrase, found on the second-to-last page, in a book made of “a mere labyrinth of letters”.
O Time Thy Pyramids is a musical exploration of basic ratios and permutations. Specifically, the piece explores the potentiality of strict calculation to create timespans, rhythms, proportions, and harmonies that effect a sense of timelessness and freedom, despite their apparent rigor. In the harmonic domain, basic ratios manifest in the calculation of ‘just intonation’ (순정률) microtonal harmonies, based on simple integer ratios and small prime numbers. The string instruments follow a slow progression of these harmonies, in increasing and then decreasing complexity. In the domain of time, the same ratios manifest in two ways. Firstly, the structure of the percussion interjections, beginning with extremely complex and exact notation and proceeding slowly to notation of great freedom, is based on their permutations. Secondly, the formal proportions of the whole work are also affected by these ratios: for example, in the work’s sketches there are a total of five large sections for the strings, and seven for the percussion.
Paradoxically, this exhaustive application of simple mathematical structures creates a feeling of unstructured, perhaps even improvised music. This paradox is embraced by the notation of the piece. The avoidance of clear tempo markings and meter for many sections results in a total duration which may fluctuate wildly from performance to performance. This paradoxical rigor-as-freedom also presents a combination of challenge and possibility to the dancers, who must use audible cues and signals in the sound of the music in order to organize their choreography.
There is one section of this piece in which systematic constructivism is abandoned. Here, an inscrutable sonic event occurs, its only justification the unconscious of its creator. This is a nod to the impression of supernatural mystery contained in encountering an ancient feat of engineering, the seeming sorcery of numbers, the patterns of the natural world. I am reminded of the Korean word 불가사의, its original etymological meaning an unimaginably vast integer (10^64). But in everyday parlance the word describes an incomprehensible mystery beyond human understanding – in fact, is often used to describe the ancient pyramids, defying our logical sense of time, which appear in Borges’s story.