Revelations (2005)

for circular toys, resonant plates, and electronics

“But what this deed would be was kept secret from me.” Juliana of Norwich

Revelations for circular toys, resonant plates, and electronics was composed in 2005. Revelations of Divine Love, a book written by the 14th century Christian mystic Juliana of Norwich, inspired composing of this work. In her narrative, Juliana disclosed her continuously transforming relationship to God. New music timbres, instruments, and temporal units are progressively unveiled in this composition.

Revelations is scored for elastic rubber balls, Bocci (Patang) metal balls, glass marbles, resonant plates made of Plexiglas, plastic (glossy and matte), aluminum, and brass, and computer. The three performers use circular toys to excite the plates in a variety of performance modes such as bouncing, rolling, and scraping. At the end, the players additionally perform with a shaker filled with glass marbles.

Perry Cook’s PhiSM stochastic physical models and bowed percussion bar model by Georg Essl and Perry Cook ported to MAX/MSP as PerRColate library were utilized in the computer part of Revelations. Additionally, Stefania Serafin’s bowed violin model and gestural models of synthesized bouncing and rolling designed by the author were employed. The computer component consists of pre-processed (tape) and real-time materials. MAX/MSP patches introduce the synthetic models in real-time. Sampled materials of percussive surfaces such as timpani, tam-tam, glockenspiel, tenor drum, and glass pane scraped with a rubber ball are mixed with the models in the pre-recorded part.

MP3 Examples: Audio1 (824Kb), Audio2 (752 Kb), Audio3 (1.4 Mb)

Duration: 9 minutes

Click to enlarge the score examples.