et fermentent de même et les cuirs et les peaux

Zach Thomas

Duo

2017

Alto Recorder

Amplification

Countertenor

Soprano Recorder

Program Notes: et fermentent uses text from the algorithmically generated sonnet, Cent mille milliards de poèmes, by Raymond Queneaux. Queneaux’s scheme allows for 100 trillion possible poems to be generated from a restructuring of ten original sonnets. Musical material—and the architecture that binds it to text—is similarly reformulated through algorithmic process, exacerbating the effect of the poem's original structure. Text is consequently treated as a boundless commodity; exposed to a knotted, recursive procedure of seemingly inexhaustible reproduction. As the narrator attempts to free himself of the constraints of the text only more text is produced, appropriating the generative poem as a crude metaphor for labor. There is a tragic awareness of the condition to escape the routine as one becomes inextricably fused to it. This formula drives the music into a celebration of absurdity and excess, constituting a shell game of meaning and irony as the listener strains to grasp at splinters of phonetic material.
Performer Credits: UMSnJIP