Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

The work's title is indicative of its various symmetrical pitch patterns. These pitch patterns are each derived from the opening palindromic arpeggios. The intervals of these arpeggios are also initially augmented (made wider) in a symmetrical manner. Later the pitches and intervals of the initial arpeggios are used to create various "pitch fields". These pitch fields are also normally symmetrical in nature and are used in melodic or foreground textures while other chords also derived from the initial arpeggios appear around these foreground pitches as an accompaniment.

Structurally, Exhibited Symmetry focuses on contrasting "time-space" notated sections that have no rhythm, with very rhythmically strict sections. The strict rhythmic sections also use "metric modulations" where the rhythm in one tempo becomes a different rhythmic value in another tempo. These are used initially to create faster tempi before returning back to the original tempo. Overall this technique is used to create faster and faster tempi culminating with the fastest of these at the climax. The finale uses this process in reverse as the metric modulations occur with slower tempi, resulting in the work's pitches gradually dissipating.

Work Details

Year: 2010

Instrumentation: Piano.

Duration: 5 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Some unmeasured sections and tempo/metronome modulations.

First performance: by Jihyeon Lim at Six performers seeking a composer (Sydney Conservatorium of Music) on 26 Oct 2012