PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 28 July 2024

Of This Word’s Being … heard / not heard (2014)

(Soprano, Flute, Piano, Percussion)
Text: from the writings of Heraclitus, as assembled by the composer)

by Roger Reynolds

This work – for soprano, flute, percussion, and piano – responds to the long relationship I had with Iannis Xenakis, and to the writings of the enigmatic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. As a prompt for my work, I assembled the text below from translations found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It reflects the obstinate independence that characterized Heraclitus, and was not absent from Xenakis’s ways: 

                    Of this Word's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending,
                    both before they hear and once they have heard it.

                    Learning many things does not teach understanding.

                    The things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, I prefer.

                    Collections: wholes and not wholes; brought together, pulled apart; sung in unison, sung in conflict;
                    from all things one and from one all things.

          Of This Word’s Being … references stochastic distributions, vocal utterance, games, the interplay of intensity with significance, and matrix-derived resource distribution. In Musiques formelles, Xenakis describes his early work, Achorripsis. The numbers 28 and 21 were central to his calculations, and I have borrowed the latter as a time interval that is relentless, inescapable. A calculation based on Poisson’s law, distributed the instrumental behaviors available to him in his work. I have re-assigned to the same numerical distribution a set of performative ensemble ideals, the density of which irregularly increases throughout Of This Word’s Being... Some aspects are notated in metrically specific ways, but the majority of the notation calls upon the performers to guide the placement, production, and progress of events in accord with priorities and ideals that I specify. So, this new work, commissioned by the Musica Sacra Festival, is his, mine, and theirs.

– Roger Reynolds