Dawn Postludes
Music by Haworth Hodgkinson
High Moss HM 018 (69:45) • Released 27 September 2018
All music composed, performed and recorded by Haworth Hodgkinson in 2018
Cover from a photograph by Haworth Hodgkinson
Album © Haworth Hodgkinson 2018
Downloads: Album • CD booklet (PDF) • CD inlay (PDF)
Links: Haworth Hodgkinson
Buy album via Bandcamp (secure)
Dawn Postludes (2018)
Dawn Postludes I and II are not so much two separate pieces as two versions of the same piece. In the field of electroacoustic music there is often one fixed definitive version of a piece, but I am attracted by the idea that there could be multiple equally valid versions, just as there are for a scored piece played by live musicians. Putting out a recording of a piece seems like declaring a definitive version, and for this album I thought I would try to get around this issue by including two versions of one piece.
Dawn Postlude is a "process piece", by which I mean that everything you hear is generated by a process that is left to unfold according to pre-determined parameters, with no intervention from me once it is set in motion. I have made many such process pieces – sometimes the process is open-ended and I let it run for a time then stop it, whereas in other cases the process runs its course to a fixed endpoint. Some pieces are hybrid, such as Three Day Hocket on the album Red Nocturnes, where the process would theoretically reach completion after about 72 hours but for the sake of the album I terminate it after 4 minutes.
In Dawn Postlude the process is finite, and by varying the speed at which it unfolds I made two versions lasting around 15 and 55 minutes. These lengths are not arbitrary – 15 minutes is the shortest target duration for which I thought the end result didn't sound rushed, and 55 minutes was chosen to be significantly longer and at the same time to bring the total up to CD length.
I don't want to say much about the actual process – I could explain in detail how it works, but that would no doubt become extremely long-winded, and I prefer to let the listener experience the music with an innocent ear.
You may recognise preoccupations that feature in my other music, such as my interest in tuning systems. In this piece, in fact, the tuning system is dynamic, changing as part of the process.
Dawn Postlude I was first played in public at a concert organised by the group Shift-Enter at the University of Aberdeen on 25 September 2018. Dawn Postlude II makes its first public appearance with the launch of this album.
Notes © Haworth Hodgkinson 2018