The students have left Dartington for Christmas holidays, and the place is eerily quiet. I took advantage of this peace tonight, when I dressed myself in almost every piece of clothing I own, and took myself and an old rug out to the field in between higher close and aller park to watch the Geminids meteor shower. The visibility in this part of Devon is great, and the clouds managed to stay away for most of the twenty minutes that I was out there. But this wasn't just a pleasure venture; I was working on a new piece.
I saw 23 meteors in under 20 minutes, and for each one I recorded its position (simple terms: north, north east, south west, etc.) and it's intensity (brightness, duration, length etc.). It is my intention to use these records for a piece. I've recorded the duration between each meteor that I spotted, but will probably reduce the collective time (therefore instead of 20 minutes, bring the time down to 5 minutes, therefore reducing the duration between each meteor by a quarter). This will leave me with a 5 min long piece, during which I will have 8 string players playing pp microtonal passages with the inclusion of some harmonics. When the duration has passed that a meteor has been seen (in this case, heard), a string player will play a glissando (the dynamics of which will depend on the intensity said meteor had been recorded at). The piece will continue in this series, with each string player (labelled 1- 8) given a chance to play a glissando at some point. Here is as possible audience layout for this piece:
It's good to have an idea in the works. How amazing would it be to do this piece outdoors, under say, the Perseids meteor shower in august? You could have the string players play the music while one string player looks to the sky and plays improvised glissando each time they spot a meteor. I don't think there are any big meteor showers in july (which is when the MA show will be) so I'll have to stick with what I've got for this one!
