Update 8 July 2024
SERIES OF WORKS
Except for some works which remain in manuscript form in the Reynolds Archive, all compositions
are published by or are on rental from
Wise Music Classical (Part of Wise Music Group.
CONTACT THE COMPOSER
RENTAL LIBRARY MANAGER: Laura Lynch
laura.lynch@editionpeters.com
VOICESPACE Series
Since each of us knows so much about the behavior of the voice – intimate endearments, rage at a distance – it is an ideal vehicle for auditory spatial illusions (all the more when in the service of language and its powers of invocation). In the early 70s, at the Center for Music Experiment in La Jolla, I heard daily rehearsals of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble as they perturbed vocal norms. Evenings, I read my daughter, Erika, to sleep trying to capture, for each character in the story, an individual and consistent vocal behavior. She was a demanding critic, and stimulated a good deal of nocturnal reflection about vocal identity. Electronics, at first analogue, later digital systems, offered rather precise control over auditory space. I sought spare but evocative texts and tried to conjure up unfamiliar yet appropriate vocal behaviors with which to present them. The five works in the series share a concern with the potential of auditory spatial imaging. They attempt to create a personal theater through the mind’s ear.
VOICESPACE I, Still
The Voice of Philip Larson, with the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble (EVT). Text by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1975
VOICESPACE II, A Merciful Coincidence
The voices of Edwin Harkins, Deborah Kavash, and Linda Vickerman. Text by Samuel Beckett. THEATER VERSION and ELECTROACOUSTIC VERSION. 1976
VOICESPACE III, Eclipse
The voices of Philip Larson and Carol Plantamura, with computer synthesized sound. Texts by Issa, Melville, Stevens,
Borges (The Moon, The Other Tiger ["...in the sun or deceptive moonlight..."]),
Joyce, García Márquez. 1979
VOICESPACE IV, The Palace
For the voice of Philip Larson, with computer processing and spatialization. 1978-80
VOICESPACE V, The Vanity of Words
The recorded and computer manipulated voice of Philip Larson. Text by Milan Kundera. 1986
SUMMARY:
VOICESPACE I - V (1975-1986), cf, SERIES OF WORKS
Voicespace I, STILL, Quadraphonic electroacoustic work utilizing voices of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble
Written with support from a 1976 Bicentennial Year National Endowment for the Arts Award
There is no score. Digital sound files available on rental.
Voicespace II, A MERCIFUL COINCIDENCE, Quadraphonic electroacoustic work utilizing voices of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble
Written with support from a 1976 Bicentennial Year National Endowment for the Arts Award.
This work has two versions:
ELECTROACOUSTIC version for quadraphonic dissemination
THEATRICAL version for 3 vocalists with electroacoustic sound.
The Score for the THEATRICAL version is forthcoming.
Voicespace III, ECLIPSE, Quadraphonic ELECTROACOUSTIC work using the voices of Carol Plantamura, Philip Larson, and Edwin Harkins and computer-synthesized sound
Written with support from a 1976 Bicentennial Year National Endowment for the Arts Award
There is no score. Digital sound files available on rental.
This work has two versions:
ELECTROACOUSTIC sound, quadraphonic dissemination
VIDEO version with imagery by Ed Emshwiller.) cf. MULTIMEDIA
The VIDEO version was commissioned by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Digital files available on rental.
Voicepace IV, THE PALACE, (Modest lighting and staging), Bass Baritone, Quadraphonic computer processed sound
Written with support from a 1976 Bicentennial Year National Endowment for the Arts Award.
Required digital sound files available on rental. Score available.
Voicespace V, THE VANITY OF WORDS, Stereo computer-processed sound
[Voicespace I-IV were written with the assistance of a 1976 Bicentennial Year National Endowment for the Arts Award.
The multimedia version of Voicespace III, Eclipse, was commissioned by
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Voicespace V
The Vanity of Words, computer sound, was written under the aegis of the Center for Music Experiment and Related Research, UC San Diego
imAgE / Series
In 2007, I received a message from French cellist Alexis Descharmes, who was seeking a short work for solo cello that could become a part of his 30th birthday concert. I had been thinking about the desirability of composing smaller-scale works for individual instruments, and his request determined me to begin a series of complementary solos: imagE/cello was Evocative and Evanescent while imAge/cello was Assertive and Articulate. The way in which these two abstract ideals are represented varies from pair to pair, and the former tend towards irregular form, the latter towards symmetry. The series comprises seven pairs now, in 2020, and there are plans for more.
imagE / contrabass 2008
imAge / contrabass 2010
imagE / guitar 2009
imAge / guitar 2009
imagE / piano 2007-2008
imAge / piano 2007-2008
imagE / cello 2007
imAge / cello 2007
imagE / flute 2009
imAge / flute 2014
imagE / viola 2012
imAge / viola 2014
imagE / violin 2015
imAge / violin 2015
THE RED ACT Series
In the late 1990s, I was commissioned by the BBC Proms Festival to create a large-scale work for orchestra, chorus and computer sound. I decided to use this opportunity to “seed” a series of works that would eventually culminate in an opera: The Red Act. The story that attracted my attention was the clash between the public purposes of Agamemnon, and the domestic imperatives of Clytemnestra which came to a tragic intersection with the fateful sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia. The work is in three movements: The Storm, A Dream of Calm, and Threnody. Their texts are drawn from Aeschylus and Euripides and probe the dramatic contrasts between the various actors’ perspectives. A feature of this initial work in the series was the recording (by the BBC Singers) of choral manifestations of key words – I called them “images” – from the text: “Fire”, “Howls”, “At Night”, “Waves”, and so on. These were then subjected to intricate computer processing and spatialization. They would then also serve as points of connection between the various stages of future works in the series.
Three instrumental works addressed the metaphoric “voices” of Cassandra (…brain ablaze, she howled aloud), Agamemnon (A Crimson Path) and Iphigenia (Toward Another World). There is also an electroacoustic work entitled The Red Act Arias Suite, that comprises an exploration of all of the aforementioned computer-manipulated choral “seeds” along with some spectacular recordings and computer spatializations of a fiery inferno and an ocean storm.
The two penultimate works, each a bit less than an hour long, are JUSTICE (commissioned by the Library of Congress, and focused upon Clytemnestra’s views) and ILLUSION (commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Koussevitzky Foundation and presenting the perspectives of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Cassandra).
The culminating opera, The Red Act, for the series remains un-realized.
The Red Act Arias (orchestra, chorus, 8-channel computer sound, and narrator) 1997
The Red Act Aria Suites (electroacoustic work using choral and natural sounds) 1997-2001
Toward Another World: LAMENT (a three-movement duo for clarinet and computer musician) 2010
A Crimson Path (a three-movement composition for cello and piano) 2000-2008
… brain ablaze, she howled aloud (for 1, 2, or 3 piccolos and computer sound) 2000-2003
… b.a. … (a brief re-working of materials from brain ablaze in honor of the retirement of flutist Robert Aitken from his decades-long role as Professor of Flute at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik Freiburg)
JUSTICE (for actress, soprano, percussionist, and 8-channel computer-processed and spatialized sound) 1999-2000
ILLUSION (for 2 actors, soprano, baritone, solo clarinet, cello, and piccolo, a brass and percussion ensemble, and 8-channel computer-processed and spatialized sound) 2005-2006
More on IllUSION here at Los Angeles Phil
SHARESPACE Series
With Dream Mirror (2010), I began a series of duos in which a solo instrumentalist is paired with a computer musician who uses a set of algorithms of my design to respond to and provoke his instrumentalist partner. In several of these, the musical materials in play derive from a contrasting “imAgE” pair composed previously and now extrapolated into a more ambitious and extended form. The ways in which the algorithms (PROLIF, SMEARZ, MATRIX, and THINNR) reconstrue and elaborate seeds from the live instrumentalist’s materials allows their use as immersive environments that nourish and respond to the instrumentalist’s music, but also to re-direct and challenge their respective instrumentalist. The interplay between the duo partners in these works – both are on stage – generates a rich and intimate musical fabric born of giving and taking. It's all about the value of sharing.
SHARESPACE I: Dream Mirror (for guitar and computer musician) 2010
SHARESPACE II: MARKed MUSIC (for contrabass and computer musician) 2011
SHARESPACE III: Toward Another World: LAMENT (for clarinet and computer musician) 2010-2017
SHARESPACE IV: Shifting/Drifting (for violin and computer musician) 2015
SHARESPACE V: ACTIONS (for piano and computer musician) 2018-2020
SHARESPACE VI: PERSISTENCE (for cello and computer musician) 2019-2023
VERSIONS / STAGES Series (1986-91)
When I was a student at the University of Michigan, I had a music history professor who insisted in his lectures that “form and content” were inseparable. This did not ring true
for me, and I determined that, at some future moment, I would demonstrate to my own satisfaction, that the two could be independent entities. Later, I noticed the series paintings
of Monet (Haystacks, The Houses of Parliament, and the Rouen Cathedral). Painted at different times of the day and seasons, such that their appearance could differ radically,
their formal features were nonetheless unchanged. Becoming interested in computer algorithms in the early 1980s, I realized that it would be possible to take a one-minute-long sound file, and to fragment it in a principled way, so that any means of an overall formal paradigm — in which fragments had specific positions in time and spatial location
— could offer a consistent “form” that could be quite differently manifested, depending upon the character of the sound source (the ocean, an actress performing Dionysus, a trickling waterfall).
VERSIONS/STAGES I, Cello Dream (1986-87)
Computer processed sound
VERSIONS/STAGES II, Dionysus (Text: Tadashi Suzuki's adaptation of Euripides's The Bacchae) (1986-87)
Computer processed sound
VERSIONS/STAGES III, Waterfall (1986-87)
Computer processed sound
VERSIONS/STAGES IV, Farewell Cult (Text: Tadashi Suzuki’s "The Farewell Cult") (1986-87)
Computer processed sound
VERSIONS/STAGES V, Ocean (1991)
Computer processed sound
PASSAGE Series (2009-2016 and forward)
The PASSAGE live events are conceived for particular circumstances, and not repeated. They constitute collections of Reynolds’s written texts read aloud, his voice spatialized so as to drift above the audience, distancing the textural content from his presence. Each text – a remembered incident, a chiseled argument for …, a belief – co-exists with images, always morphing. From time to time, live performers come forward and provide their views in musical garb. The whole is a crafted opportunity, not a purposeful lesson.
PASSAGE 1 2009
PASSAGE 2 2010
PASSAGE 3 2010
PASSAGE 4 2010
PASSAGE 5 2011
PASSAGE 6 2011
PASSAGE 7 2012
PASSAGE 8 2012
PASSAGE 9 2012-13
PASSAGE 10 2013-14
PASSAGE 11 2016
PASSAGE 12 2023
PASSAGE 13 2024
WATERSHED I-V (1995-2022)
Watershed I (1995) 27.5'
Solo Percussion
First performance: 1 December 1995
Manhattan School of Music, New York, Steven Schick, Percussion
SOLO and PERCUSSION
Watershed III (1995) 31'
Solo Percussion, Chamber Orchestra,
Optional real-time computer sound spatialization
Fl (Picc), Ob, Cl, B-cl, Hn, Tpt, B-tbn, Pf, 2 Vln, Vla, Vc, Db
First performance: 30 October 1995
Loeb Centre, New York
Music Mobile Ensemble, Steven Schick, Percussion,
Bruno Ferrandis, Conductor Peter Otto, Spatialization
TECHNICAL SCORE by Roger Reynolds
SOLO WITH ENSEMBLE
Watershed IV (1995) 29'
Solo Percussion, Real-time computer sound spatialization
First performance: 11 April 1996
Mandeville Center for the Arts, La Jolla
Steven Schick, Percussion, Peter Otto, Spatialization
TECHNICAL SCORE by Roger Reynolds
ELECTROACOUSTIC
Watershed V (2020)
Solo Percussion, Stereophonic, algorithmically generated "Shimmer"
First performance: 1 September 2020
Mathias Reumert, Percussion
Copenhagen, Denmark
TECHNICAL SCORE by Roger Reynolds
ELECTROACOUSTIC
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