Mark Simon's Madhouse

[diegobueno]

The music is based on a new formulation of tonality which I have been developing, based not on the usual major/minor triad, but a collection of pitches known as 5-29 (that being the designation given to it in Allen Forte's book The Structure of Atonal Music). My aim is to generate the same kind of harmonic coherence given by the systematic use of 3-11 (i.e. major/minor triad) in regular tonal music.

Each quark is represented by a specific interval, and each anti-quark by the inversion of that interval. Thus, the Up quark, the most common kind, is represented by a perfect 5th, the anti-up by a perfect 4th. The Down quark is a major third and the anti-down quark is a minor 6th. The Charm quark is a minor third, and the anti-charm quark is a major 6th. The Strange quark is a tritone (and for that reason I didn't attempt to put an anti-strange quark in this piece). The bottom quark is a minor 2nd and the anti-bottom is a major 7th.

Each hadron is represented by a motive derived from the intervals associated with the quarks which comprise it. The Pion, being a particle consisting of an up and anti-down quark, is based on the perfect 5th and minor 6th. Eta-C, being made up of charm and anti-charm quarks, uses minor thirds and major 6ths. That one is a canon in inversion.

The hydrogen atom is represented by a full-fledged melody, made from the motives of the proton and neutron (which are in turn derived from the 5ths and major 3rds of their up and down quarks).

[diegobueno]

New composition, Paranoia Rag, completed today. This is the eighth ragtime piece I've written for clarinet quartet (3 Bb's and bass clarinet), and the first one to bring the harmonic language into the late 20th century. The title does not reflect my state of mind in my new home in DC (at least not yet). This is just the completion of something started last year.

Today marks the first performance of Carnival of the Subatomic Particles, actually a pre-first performance, since the official premiere is not until next Sunday. This will be at the Sciencecenter in Ithaca. I haven't been able to attend the rehearsals after the first few, but I assume they have the music in shape by now


http://www.sciencenter.org/whatsnew/eventscalendar.asp

[xanadudldu]

Today marks the first performance of Carnival of the Subatomic Particles

What a great title for a piece. Makes me think of Kekule and his dancing molecules.

We heard a local amateur orch do a nice job with C of A last night.

Good luck w/ the premiere.

-xld

[diegobueno]

Today they'll just be playing selections (presumably leaving out the more difficult numbers). Last time I attended a rehearsal, "Pions", "Kaons" and "Electrons" were sounding really good. The Introduction, and the finale, "Hydogen" were on the verge of sounding good.

[diegobueno]

Here's the text by retired physics prof. N. David Mermin which will be read before and inbetween movements of Carnival of the Subatomic Particles.

http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~mermin/homepage/Carnival4.html

[diegobueno]

You can listen to "Pions", the third movement of my Carnival right here:

http://snipurl.com/1ezrg

click on the file that says "01 Pions mp3" (this is from a rehearsal about a month ago)

[diegobueno]

I thoroughly enjoyed Sunday's performance of Carnival of the Subatomic Particles. It was well attended, largely by physicists from Cornell. Music's Recreation even got the director of the Cornell synchotron to give a little talk about what they do.

I spoke for about 10 minutes, which is about 9 minutes longer than any composer should talk about his piece as far as I'm concerned. But numerous people said they found my talk amusing and that it added to their appreciation of what was going on in the music.

The piece itself, music together with verse, lasts about 45 minutes, and about 30 minutes of that is music. It's all very difficult music too and I know these players' abilities were stretched by it, but they came up with a pretty decent performance. I'm a happy composer.