WRITINGS
TSENG Yu-Chung / 曾毓忠
Five Soundscapes for Acoustic Instruments and Taped Computer Music
Edition: Doctor of Musical Arts Dissertation, Denton (TX), the University of North Texas
Date: 1998
Region: UNITED STATES
Origin: TAIWAN
Type of media: Grey
Language: English
Editor:
Comment: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection, Copyright UMI - Dissertations Publishing 1998
Abstract:
Five Soundscapes is a five-movement electroacoustic composition of approximately 34 minutes duration. With the exception of the first movement, each movement of the composition is scored for acoustic instrument and taped computer music: Movement I--computer music alone, Movement II--piano and computer music, Movement III--clarinet and computer music, Movement IV--oboe and computer music, Movement V--oboe, clarinet, piano, and computer music.
Inspired by Chinese poems, the overall characteristics of the work reflect the assimilation of several non-Western musical and philosophical influences such as the use of pentatonic scale patterns, the principle of embellishing a single note, and the application of the I-Ching in dealing with active instrumental passages over a long-sustained computer music drone. Traditional Western compositional techniques such as aleatory counterpoint, serialism, and moment form are also employed in the treatment of thematic material, developmental processes and formal design.
This work reflects composer's interest in the idea of integration of live instruments and prerecorded sounds. Several computer music techniques such as the FFT (fast Fourier transformation) and granular synthesis are used for much of the manipulations of the sound material to provide an optimal fusion with the instrumental sounds. The composition can be viewed as an exploration of coexistence of opposites, i.e., the fixed (pre-recorded) and the live aspects of performance. The coexistence of the two opposite forces is a suggestion of Ying-Yang, a prominent aspect of Chinese philosophy, which has been a predominant theme of composer's music for a number of years.