PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 24 March 2025

POSITINGS
Chamber Quintet and Computer Musician

by Roger Reynolds

Positings involves a reactive exchange of materials and process between a chamber quintet (piccolo doubling flute, horn, piano, violin, and cello) and a computer musician who manipulates recorded samples in real time by means of a controller and a computer on which are installed four computer algorithms: SMEARZ, PROLIF, MATRIX, and THINNR. Each of these algorithms has a number of variables that can be performed in real time so as to allow an intricate and responsive exchange between the quintet and the computational resource. The dissemination of the computer sound can be adapted to varying conditions, but requires, minimally, a surround speaker array.

There are five instrumental “posits,” each a miniature movement itself with distinctive character and unique materials. Particular components of these instrumental sections are then transformed by the computer musician in a series of five interstitial “responses.” During these responsive passages, the materials of one of the instrumental miniatures are reformulated and newly mixed so as to create an elaborated extension of the potential inherent in one of the instrumental posits.

The first posit is followed immediately by a response that re-presents its essences in altered form. Thereafter, the remaining four instrumental miniatures – the positings – continue, separated by four other responses that are displaced in their temporal positions. So, a posit and its response do not reliably follow one another. Memory and anticipation enter into the relationships between a subject and its transformations. The aggregate pattern is:

Posit 1, Response 1, Posit 2, Response 3, Posit 3, Response 5, Posit 4, Response 2, Posit 5, Response 4

During each of the extended computer responses, the instrumentalists have their own, semi-improvisatory reactions to the computer’s transformations. There are seven of these “enhancements,” two during responses 2 and 3, and one during the other three. The final enhancement is the most extended, coming at the close of the final Response 4. It continues after the computer transformations have ceased. So, the quintet has, as it were, the last words. This final enhancement section has a consistency and expansiveness that melds the worlds of the instrumental positings and the computer responses that precede it.

Positings was commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music and is dedicated to it. My musical assistant in this project has been Paul Hembree.

- Roger Reynolds, Cambridge, December 2012

The passages labeled as “Core” appear, always, as solos, and are at the expressive and structural centers of their respective Positings.

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