PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 6 December 2023

Transfigured Wind II (1984)
(for solo flute, orchestra and computer processed sound)

by Roger Reynolds

Musical variation has always fascinated me, and recent engagements in Paris and California with large computer systems have led me toward a formal ideal that might be called the “transformational mosaic”. I apologize for dropping this locution into your innocent laps. The idea is clear to me but I find it difficult to put into words succinctly. It is my suspicion that this confirms its essentially musical nature.

Computers allow us to recast musical materials, to transform them in ways that are intriguing and let one retain that delicious and mysterious sense with which a fine performer imbues a musical line. One instance of what I mean might be captured by referring to the slow-motion imagery that television has made available. We are all now able to share the magical grace inherent in the movements of an athlete, a dancer at his work. There is a poetic evolution, an inevitability to these slowed-down experiences that can now have a direct parallel in the world of sound. In short, aspects of our experience that were always there, but to which we had no access, now can form a part of our (repeatable) aesthetic opportunities.

In composing Transfigured Wind II, I began with a four-part solo for flute. It was recorded as performed. That is, all the directional, musical intelligence that the soloist brought to my phrases was captured and became, along with pitch, duration and dynamics, a part of the compositional materials. Once inside the computer, it could undergo a host of transformations before reemerging on the tape you will hear.

The making of this central aspect of the work would not have been possible without the formidable support of my musical assistant in this project, Richard Boulanger. Mark Dolson of the staff at the Computer Audio Research Laboratory on the University of California at San Diego campus was also of great importance to my work. I am deeply grateful to them, to Lee Ray, and to the entire CARL facility at UCSD, where this work was realized.

The four solo flute sections, in the context of an actual performance, function as proposals, each longer and with a new character. To the soloist’s proposals, the ensemble responds with transformations, elaborations of what has been offered. On tape, a rather “painterly” montage of the soloist’s elements and lines is contributed. It would, of course, have been ungracious to conceive the computer processed materials so that they challenged the capacities of the live soloists. My aim was rather to provide unexpected, perhaps otherworldly reflections of and upon the soloist's specifics, elaborations that might serve to enlarge the range of our understanding as listeners (and, perhaps, to instill fresh impetus into the soloist’s successive statements).

This work (like its predecessor, Archipelago, commissioned by Ircam in Paris) is primarily concerned with the way in which transformations may allow music a more subtle and far-reaching engagement with the wonders of our temporal experience as human beings. We anticipate, reflect, recall. We are sometimes absorbed in specifics, at other time we wander in larger, less well-defined worlds of impression. My aim in devising the idea of “transformational mosaic” was to invite back into music recognizable but not literal repetition of materials, while at the same time providing a basis for the role of the precursor — that which acts as a premonition of musical ideas that have not yet appeared in definitive form but do so as the work progresses.

I have shared with you some admittedly speculative notions. These intentions are, as I have said, for me quite clear in the music but still difficult to communicate outside of it. John Cage once remarked to me, in response to some probing, “I am, perhaps, still too young to these ideas.” It did not prevent him from a practical engagement with them. My circumstance is similar. I hope that you will find the computer to be a more evocative, less severe musical instrument in this work than you may have thought it was. It can, I believe, extend the reach of our musical imaginations, of our experience as human beings.

Finally, Transfigured Wind II is dedicated to Karen, who is very much at its roots. Gratitude is also due to my friend Harvey Sollberger, who was my collaborator in the development of the basic sound materials and whose playing is the basis for the computer processing. Transfigured Wind II was written with the assistance of the Systems Development Foundation, and premièred on 4 June 1984 at Horizons ’84, New York, American Composers Orchestra, Harvey Sollberger, flute, Charles Wuorinen, conductor.

  – Roger Reynolds