panoramas nyc symphonic notes:

this symphony was begun in manhattan in 1997, composed many places in between, and finished in manhattan in 2002

in 2000 i shook the digital dust off of it and looked towards finishing it, as a contemplation / meditation

overall it synthesizes a cross-over of diverse musical experiences: vernacular and classical, swing and straight, digital and analog, portrayed sometimes powerfully and at times subdued, naturally using alternating orchestral sections demonstrating raw coloristic contrasts, and orchestral tutti combinations (where pink noise (1/f)) dispersal of instrumentation has been orchestrated)

chords - ultimately represent an alternating or binary pair, each sounded conceptually on a cosmic drum, sometimes independentally, and other times concurrently, together exhibiting a few common tones, and one chord (drum) containing a cross relation

chord 1: c f g c eb f (4 pitches)
chord 2: eb a b eb f ab (5 pitches)

modality - chord tones fall into f lydian flat 7 (jazz lydian) / f dorian / c melodic minor

rhythm - honored freetime rhythmic phrasing, which is 'off time', or non-repetetive, yet distinctive in its nature, resonating from macro to micro, grand to granular, universal to quantum vibrations - coming from folkloric african and jazz drumming traditions, and achieved by randomizing time and and growing the seed with the use of, for example, markov chains / distributions

structurally have abandoned the absolute use of gradual change in favor of contrasting sections, but still maintained the use of self similar generation, the gradual transition from one section to the next has been edited out to effect immediate contrast

symphony is made up of three sections, in which the master or seed phrase and phrase variants occur at regular intervals, acting as pillars, while the other two sections rotate around the pillars, as rigging and canvas

this symphony can be viewed panoramically, as an environmental description - an art object on a grand scale spread across a metropolis (a la christo³), so that at the end of the piece one has taken in the whole vista, an abstraction reflecting a decade of life in new york city . . .

howard elmer
nyc: 2002