Here are some things which have been occupying me musically and personally over the last week.
This week, I want to talk about a technique which frequently populates my music. When daunted by a blank page, it is one of the first places I go to – musical cryptography. I did not invent the technique, or the term for it, “crypto-serialism,” but I have found some success with it. The essence of the technique is developing a musical chiper to convert strings of characters into musical pitches; a title, concept, name, or line of text or poetry becomes a series of notes.
Below is the cipher I typically use:
There are several good examples of this in the early music of Dr. Neal Endicott, a composer/theorist I met while I was completing my undergraduate work at Western Michigan University. His Boketto for solo flute, riverrun for solo saxophone, and Come Slowly, Eden are a few which come to mind. You can see the conversion of numbers using a similar method in my works in the Elements series of musical miniatures (for example, the properties of Hydrogen and Helium).
The most extensive use in my music can be heard in the recently-released Leviathan. Inspired by the mythological creature as portrayed in the Bible and the cult television series Supernatural, several musical motives and chords are derived from the supposed qualities of the creature.
In the example below, the word “hunger” is converted into pitches. The vertical sonority is based on the letters in order, from the lowest note to the highest.
However, the order of the pitches in the vertical sonority aren’t always important, as in the below rendering of the word “Leviathan” (left). The piano spells out in pitches the word “Purgatory,” the mythical home of the creature.
There are several creative avenues to explore with this method. These include rhythm, repetition, register, and converting parts of these musical words into musical motives. The possibilities are endless, but it is a definite method of finding where to start! I will use it in the baritone saxophone commission I am working on this year, and will discuss other techniques I use in future blog posts.
Personally, the week was eventful! I worked the state music educators convention; it’s always nice connecting with music educators whom I don’t always get to see, and I was recognized a few times for my music (which is always surreal!). Dark Matter was featured on a reading session, and a set of my music was won in a raffle (I autographed the score for the director!). I’m always grateful for the love and support.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
Written 2/4/24
Jason Taurins 