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Work

Knismesis and Gargalesis : for oboe, bassoon and piano

by Ian Whitney (2018)

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Work Overview

For something so common to the human experience, tickling has not been widely studied. Although it has occupied minds as diverse as Aristotle and Bacon, a taxonomy of tickling wasn't published until 1897, by psychologists Hall and Allin. They proposed the binary terms which I've taken as the title of my trio, and its two connected movements. Knismesis refers to a feathery, light touch. It isn't associated with play, nor does it produce laughter, and we can induce knismesis on ourselves. This is assumed to be an evolutionary development- we feel a 'tickling' sensation and go to scratch it- thus removing the foreign object (insect or rogue thread) from our skin. It is not limited to humans- the infamous party trick of hypnotising a shark by 'tickling' its underside or nose is a form of knismesis. Gargalesis is much more mysterious. It is the tickling we associate with laughter and is almost uniquely found among humans and, to a lesser extent, primates. Unlike knismesis, it cannot be self-induced and there is no clear consensus on why we do it. It has been thought that it helped form interpersonal bonds- connections with other humans- but 2012 experiments by Harris at the University of California San Diego with 'tickling robots' have questioned this assumption. In my Gargalesis, the tickling begins as play but soon becomes oppressive and tortuous- the musical equivalent of 'tickle torture' when childhood games go from play to irritation.

Work Details

Year: 2018

Instrumentation: Oboe, bassoon, piano.

Duration: 8 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

First performance: by Andrew Barnes, Bernadette Harvey, Shefali Pryor at Goldberg's Reimagined (Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music) on 4 Sep 2018

Performances of this work

23 Mar 20: Melba Hall, University of Melbourne. Featuring Ensemble Francaix.

25 Aug 19: Tempo Rubato. Featuring Ensemble Francaix.

17 Jul 19: Queensland International Chamber Music Competition, Queensland Conservatorium, Brisbane. Featuring Ensemble Francaix.

4 Sep 2018: at Goldberg's Reimagined (Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music). Featuring Andrew Barnes, Bernadette Harvey, Shefali Pryor.

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