Con Sequence
Instrumentation:
Percussion trio for 2 marimbas and 1 vibraphone
Duration: 4‘30”
World Premiere: August 11 2019 at the Australian Marimba Competition Gala Concert (Melbourne, Australia)
US Premiere: November 23 2021 (Duluth, Minnesota)
Other performances:
Melbourne Conservatorium of Music 2021 Graduating Showcase
University of Minnesota Duluth Percussion Ensemble (US Premiere)
Program notes:
Con Sequence explores the dichotomy of consonance and dissonance by dissecting two ostensibly opposing keys. In this bitonal percussion trio, one marimba plays in Eb Major, the other in A Major, and the vibraphone swaps between the two. These two tonal centres can be considered as far removed from each other as possible, harmonically speaking; they are one tritone apart, or halfway across the cycle of fifths. Intuition would therefore predict that these two keys would sound very dissonant and jarring when played together. Instead, this piece is constructed by sifting through the individual notes of each key to find the commonalities and consonances; the non-discordant crossovers between the two. This is where the melodies originate from; they are built from the consonant fragments of each scale. As well as consonances, there are also two notes enharmonically common to both keys: Ab/G# and D. These notes, just like the keys themselves, are a tritone apart, and feature as the last two notes of the piece, further juxtaposing the consonance of unison with the notorious discordance of the tritone interval.