Transmutation

Programme note

With the later works of Debussy and Boulez at the forefront of its conception, Transmutation collapses the distinction between musical material and the processes applied to it. The work is imagined as a transitionless yet carefully precipitated orchestral state: form does not announce itself through sectional borders, but arises from the continuous transformation of what is already sounding.

Pulse-like repetitions of rhythmically varied pitch strata operate at both micro- and macro-temporal levels. These strata are never stable. Jagged polyphony gives way to accelerating tremolos and delicate glissandi; instrumental combinations are extracted, magnified and rebalanced through continual transactions of temperament, colour, texture and intensity. Orchestration is not applied to the material after the fact—it is inseparable from the material’s identity.

The piece was composed through a process the composer describes as osmosis: whenever one quality becomes too highly concentrated, the music searches for equilibrium, loses it and begins that search again. Recurring chains of pulse give the listener an aural path through the dense polyphonic field without interrupting its larger fluidity. The orchestra behaves less like a mechanism travelling between fixed states than a volatile, almost sentient body, continually altering the conditions of its own motion.