Tautology

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, violas, cellos, basses

Year composed: 2021

Duration: 9'

The statement “Architecture is frozen music” has been the catalyst for my work the last few years. Form and structure in music, as in architecture, creates a blueprint permitting composers to complete multiple works in a small window of time. They both play a role in why an individual can write dozens of symphonies, string quartets, concertos, film scores, pop songs, etc. Through history, a composer could utilize a form that maps out when and where to leave and/or return to a key signature and, as a result, see their work’s destination before writing a note. Once the structure is conceptualized, the piece begins to write itself. 

With a reverence for form—traditional and novel—I constructed Tautology, a work having its structure synonymous with its name—an expression of two different words or ideas that have the same meaning. Simply, x = y. Verbal examples include:

“He is a single bachelor.”

“Watch out for the frozen ice on the road.”

“In my opinion, I think they over exaggerate.”

Most of us take on tautologies in speech but avoid them in writing as they make documents too wordy. In storytelling literature, however, they’ve made significant tools for expression such as in Hamlet, “To be or not to be.” 

Relating to musical form, Tautology is built in two parts. Though the material differs, they are structured alike. The first section introduces a phrase that’s reflected throughout the orchestra in different voices over an ostinato which is, too, reflected in different instruments. Once the section ends, a new phrase begins which is, again, imitated over a new repeated bass—same structure, different material. The same phrase repeated by different instruments, along with the repeating ostinatos, can both be looked at as tautologies in their own right making a total of five comprising the work. (You’ll find another tautology in the previous sentence, another in the succeeding sentence, and an additional two in the last sentence of this program note.) The work’s finale consists of material from both preceding sections heard together simultaneously. 

With so many similarities across a composer’s catalog, we’re writing the same works all our lives in different ways—a life long tautology. Just as the elements melody, harmony, and rhythm are vital to the craft, I continue to also prioritize form and structure. For my catalog, Tautology is a new innovation conveying architecture as frozen music and music as liquid architecture.