San Marcos, 2012 —
Pondering the physics of molecular heat energy applied metaphorically to music . . .
Lower to higher energy of musical masses comes from four factors: Tempo — standing stillness to frenetic pace; Rhythm — regular pulse to unpredictably varied; Textural rhythmic alignment — synchronous to random; Loudness — hushed to explosive.
Starting with low-energy, low-temperature continuous cool sound, listen to a favorite piece by my late colleague, co-author and friend, Larry Austin. His 1982 score for double bass quartet is“dedicated to my friend and mentor, John Cage, in his seventieth year”. I describe it in my book:
“The harmonies sounded by ambient counterpoint will all consist of only the pitch classes C, A, G, and E, created by scordatura open strings and harmonics. And the open-ended improvisational nature of the work, expressed by an artistically drawn matrix score, is an obvious and elegant homage to Cage’s deep interest in chance and open form.”
Thomas Clark —
Larry Austin: Life and Works of an Experimental Composer
(Borik Press, 2012)
In gentle sustained tones, the texture moves continuously through a matrix of sound projecting a subtly changing but almost steady-state sonority. Very low temperature music . . .
LISTEN ›
Robert Black, bass
Water sounds
The many bodies of water figuring prominantly in my life include:
- Shiawassee (rural Michigan)
- Huron (Ann Arbor)
- Lake Michigan (Leelanau)
- Puget Sound (Seattle)
- Lake Spanaway (Tacoma)
- Lake Texoma (Texas)
- Vltava (the Moldau, Prague)
- Green Lake and Duck Lake (Interlochen)
- Lake Ray Roberts (Texas)
- Albamarle Sound (Outer Banks)
- Salem Lake (Winston-Salem)
- Gulf of Mexico (Port Aransas)
- San Marcos River (San Marcos)
Inspired by the great serenades for strings of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, my string serenade explores musical metaphors for the physics of water in interesting atmospheric and geographic settings.
Three States of Water
Clark 2021, TC-107
I. Cold front (VAPOR becomes SOLID)
In low clouds on mountain tops, water vapor can become super-cooled and become freezing fog, filling the air with small ice crystals and freezing to surfaces, similar to very light snow. In the western United States, the common name for freezing fog is “pogonip.”
II. Ice Dunes (SOLID)
In the Leelanau Peninsula of Michigan, the Lake Michigan surf sometimes whips up and freezes in mid-air, forming weird ice caverns and ice dunes.
III. Nuages (VAPOR)
French for clouds, Nuages is one of Debussy’s three beautiful Nocturnes for orchestra, quoted here as a theme for variations. Water vapor is technically invisible. The clouds we see are actually masses of minute liquid droplets and frozen crystals. Thus this movement embodies all three states of water.
IV. Vltava (LIQUID)
The great river Vltava flows majestically through Prague. Smetana’s depiction of it in his monumental Ma Vlast is usually translated as The Moldau.
Quarks
The aggressive rhythmic character of the opening part of Joseph Schwantner’s 1980 piece is an opposite to the serenity of Austin’s art is self alteration is cage is . . . Boiling heat:
LISTEN ›
U.Mich. Symphony Band
Modern physics understands that all matter is built up from just five fundamental “particles”: electrons, up quarks and down quarks with electrical charge; and gluons and photons with no electrical charge. They are not exactly particles, though, but infinitesimal points of spin in space/time.
That’s where the next sound composition experiment began. Two 4-pitch segments of the octatonic scale appear (“quarks”), then spin at their own speeds, while smaller 3-pitch sets (“electrons”) spin above and below them. At times, the sound mass explodes with a shower of electron sparks, then reforms.
More clouds! We had Nebula, clouds of gas and dust in space, then Nuages, puffy white clouds in a blue sky. Now storm clouds . . .
Meteorology
Clark 2022 (TC-121)
Nimbus
While quarks are hard to imagine and impossible to visualize, we love to watch puffy white cumulus clouds. Their kinetic energy becomes more visible when they grow into dark, precipitation-bearing cumulonimbus storm clouds, bringing rain and crackling electricity.
Squall
A tree limb branching out from a trunk, then smaller limbs branching from it, again and again to smaller and smaller branches — a classic example of a recursive process. Sometimes lightning shows this same recursive branching process. While the tree branches take years to fill out, lightning is a sudden explosion of electricity over a split second. Thunder, as sound travels much slower than light, is heard later than the lightning flash is seen — unless, of course, it is very close by!
MAPPING MUSIC 
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