In partial fulfillment of the Master of Music degree in Composition, I composed a piece for ensemble with open instrumentation entitled CREATIO EX TYPUS. The Latin title means Creation from symbol and reveals the technique used for generating the sonic structures.
The work is fifteen minutes in duration and consists of five movements. Each movement explores a different group of abstract gestures that result in complex sonic structures by means of a combination of symbols. The symbols used are: empty space, cone, dot, line and curve. These symbols are based on five prototypes of particle tendencies from which two are states of existence and three are motion tendencies: Genesis (cone); Cessation (cone); Static (dot); Kinetic (line); Interaction (curve).
Genesis / Cessation. According to quantum physics, at subatomic levels every particle has the tendency to continuously pop in and out of existence. The existence or nonexistence status of a particle is represented musically as sound and silence (perceived sound vs. pause) and as variation in sound intensity (dynamic contour).
Static / Kinetic / Interaction. Since every particle has its own energy, the motion tendencies of this energy are translated into musical gestures as short sounds (pizzicato or staccatissimo, alone or in cluster), longer sounds (alone or in cluster) and a glissandos (alone or in cluster, with variable speed). The musical material is based on these gestures and is notated using a combination of regular music notation and the above-mentioned symbols. The composition is based on spawning these gestures in different patterns and observing their evolution that, of course, while designed and engineered at the beginning, should take its own, natural course in the end.
Research in quantum physics suggests that there is no such thing as solid matter, but one-dimensional objects in a vibrating state of existence (Superstring Theory). Two observations are the basis for my compositional approach:
(1) At the core of every aggregate, no matter how simple or complex, are the same fundamental elements, suggesting that it is not the resultant aggregate that is essential but the initial elements upon which it is built. As a result, since the sound is the most intimate element of the structure, I did not specify a fixed instrumentation, opening up the piece to any combination of instruments (open, spontaneous sound creation).
(2) Another observation is that creation seems to be transcendent at different levels. The vibration seems to be the basis of every particle that combines and recombines in more and more complex structures. Eventually it becomes everything, including living beings and the apparently solid matter which we shape into instruments; ultimately, they reproduce sounds we are meant to be able to perceive. In a certain way the creation, which in this idiom is the ultimate sound, reflects back into itself from the most complex to the simplest states of being.