Phillip Sink

October 24, 2009

This post is to my friends, previous students, and those who are not familiar with new music. As you may know, I am having an original composition performed on November 3rd (which you can stream live on your computers). This piece is considered “new” music, and may sound very unfamiliar. In fact, it may sound to you like I wrote a bunch of random/wrong notes. This is because you are most likely conditioned to hearing ONLY ONE type of harmonic organization (how composers place multiple notes together). You have heard others, but probably only in movie soundtracks.

“New music” is a misleading term that really means “new art music.” New art music refers to artistic composition that pushes the boundaries of harmony, texture, tone color (sounds), melody, rhythm etc. The whole point is to compose something that sounds “new” and fresh.  Most people are conditioned to hearing pop music. This music is rooted in simple tonality (music based on major/minor scales, and is mostly pleasant sounding). Most popular music is in a 4/4 meter, which means there is a strong feel of one beat followed by three weaker beats. Also the typical structure of popular music is a melody on top, chords or harmony underneath, a bass line, and a drum “beat.”

Composers have been going WAY beyond this for years and years, but the general population hasn’t been too receptive. Even in the classical world you will mostly hear extremely old compositions. I think the old music is great, but there is much more interesting music out there that relates more to us.

When you listen to a “new music” concert, you must know that you may hear some very “strange” and unfamiliar music. Some music may be very pleasant and what you are used to hearing. You may hear music that contains a lot of silence with random bursts of sound. You may hear music that is electronically produced. What is important is that you give it a chance, and try to find one or two things that you like about the music. You may indeed HATE some of the music that you are hearing. I sure have sat through so concerts where I extremely disliked the music. However, I always tried to find things I liked about it.

Once you are more conditioned to new music, the music stops being “weird and different,” and becomes “exciting,” “driving,” “colorful,” “emotional,” “intense,” “cool” and so on. It’s the type of music that forces you to listen, rather than arbitrarily using it as a background noise while you study, read, and exercise.

All you have to do is listen with an open mind and find something you like about each piece. If you like a certain composer’s work, try to look them up on the internet and listen to more of their work. Most living composers these days have websites to promote their work.

Maybe to pique your interest in listening to the concert, I’m going to post the program notes about my piece.

Preludes from the Great Recession Phillip Sink (b. 1982)
Number 1 “Hysteria”
Number 2 “Helplessness”
Number 3 “Disillusionment”

Chia-Ying Huang, piano

We have all experienced the “great recession” in different ways. I turned out unscathed. Others are still trying to find their way out of the dark. Then there are some that just get nice fat bonus checks.

Each short prelude represents a scene.
No. 1: Hysteria. We are all to blame, but so is the media.
No. 2: Helplessness. We’re sorry to inform you that the job in which you’ve applied has been filled by another qualified candidate.
No. 3: Disillusionment. Most of us have been disillusioned with the leaders who got us into this situation and the current elected officials who are worthless to our progress.

As you can tell you can expect to hear all kinds of different emotions, colors, and scenes. I hope you are able to listen on Nov. 3rd.

-Phillip