“Echi__” (2017) was a mental detox of mine while I was struggling with a topic for a major large-scale commission. Fall 2017, I was swamped by political disasters in my country which made me project politics into my music enormously. Therefore, I needed a break from all the emotions and personal involvement in the occurrences around me and decided to compose a solo piano piece which would be emotionally detached. Apparently, I failed this part of my decision, after all. The work focuses on the analysis of harmonic series of the fundament of the piece, which is D; its sonant and unsonant positions and consonances in its fundament. It also analyses basic principles of physics of acoustics by invocating the most natural live-played echoes possible. Apart from acoustical analysis, folk gestures in the motives, add to the timbre quite a wild, unsettled and frantic flavour. Two climaxes of the composition might be found. One is theoretical – analysis based, the focal point of this aspect is in the middle section using the infinite amount of ratios of intervals by the glissandi in the strings while phasing the echoes. The other is motivic-based, which precedes the analytical.
Recording:
Tin Yi Chelsea Wong, piano