Marking Time
Creators: name: Hope, Cat
Publisher: name: Monash University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: 190406 Music Composition
subject: FOS: Arts (arts, history of arts, performing arts, music)

description: <b>Marking Time</b>For 3 Sustaining Instruments.This is the score and related materials for the composition 'Marking Time', originally commissioned by the GreyWing Trio in 2016.<br><b>PROGRAM NOTE</b><br>This is a work that explores the power of limited materials. Each instrument has a very limited and restricted range in the piece, but explores it through the timbral variation of pitch bending and extreme, constant, smooth control of microscopic change.<br>Marking Time was an Australian TV series made in 2003, and was the first mainstream media project to address the Australian Government’s refugee policies through the story of Afghan refugees in a regional country town. The refugee issue has been handled badly for many years, only the idea of Marking Time has a much more sinister implication than it did 13 years ago, with detention centres holding adult and children refugees for years. In these environments, small details become amplified, and control is the ultimate challenge.<br><b>INSTRUCTIONS</b>Each instrument chooses a colour. Follow this colour for the whole piece. The three grey lines are pitch reference lines that represent the range of a single, ongoing sound - the top line is the highest pitch, the bottom is the lowest, and the middle is the ‘starting’ middle point. The middle point should be in the lower octave of the instrument. The range between the lines can be decided as an ensemble or as individuals. For example, the red part may choice a semi-tone either side of the central line as the range, and blue a minor third range. Or all may be the same. Or, the top and bottom lines may be the limits of a lip glissando, or single string.It is important that the motion between the 'extremes' be constant and as smooth as possible, and any breaths, bow changes etc be as masked as possible.<br><br>You need to read this score in the Decibel ScorePlayer, on an iPad. You upload the file with the extension 'dsz' onto the iPad using airdrop or via cable. This coordinates the peformance.<br><b>PERFORMANCES</b><br>Premiered 27 February 2016 at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.<br>28 October 2017, Camino al Tagliamento (UD), Italy at the "Camino Contro Corrente 2017 - La Rivoluzione d'Ottobre" Festival.<br>Progress Festival, Monash University, 2018.<br>​<br><b>RECORDINGS</b>This piece is featured on the Grey Wing 'Lines of Flight' album, available here<br><br><br><b>REVIEW</b><br><em>"Notes began and ended with barely any ostentation—they merely <em>happened,</em> and it’s an effect that sucked the (com)passion out of the sound. As time was marked in this way, it was hard not to treat the work as programmatic, a political and psychological history of the violence Australia has perpetuated on asylum seekers and refugees. Silences felt like reprieves—inspiring thoughts that perhaps a change in leadership, a successful legal challenge, would yield a change in policy — yet before the silence barely registered, the glissandi began again, relentlessly, hopelessly, the shattering experiences of the hundreds of detained asylum seekers made audible." Micheal Terren, CutCommon.</em><i><br></i><b>NOTES</b><br>This work began as a piece for guitar with ebow, bass clarinet and harp, and later developed to include any sustaining instrument, including sine tone generator.<br><br><br><br><br><br>