Nevolution

for corno da caccia (or trumpet) and piano

(2010) Duration: 11:00

Recording by Michael Tunnell (corno da caccia) and Meme Tunnell (piano)

Nevolution is a ten-minute, three movement work composed in December 2010 for Michael and Meme Tunnell. Although the title is not a recognized word, it suggests several words and ideas: revolution, evolution, and devolution, among others. The movement titles are suggestive of images or ideas that convey something of the character of the music, but they also reflect some recent ideas and theories in science.

In the first movement, Echo Migration, a fast, clearly audible pulse (or beat) in the piano regularly shifts its placement, something akin to an Escher painting (Fish and Birds, for example). The movement is also a personal play on traditional fanfare music.

Starquiet suggests a broad, slowly turning panorama, such as a sky view, with the piano suggesting points of light, perhaps. Over this gently twinkling background, the corno sings its “song without words.”

The title of the final movement, Morphic Resonance, suggests natural resonance or memory. Most of the music of the corno is derived from the overtone series, which should be performed to allow the natural “mis-tuning” of the series to occur. (Normally, the notes of the overtone series are not allowed to be in their “natural” state. They are corrected by choosing alternate fingerings or by slightly modifying the pitch otherwise.) Morphic resonance is a theory proposed by biologist Rupert Sheldrake to make sense of a wide range of unexplained (or poorly explained) natural phenomena, such as the apparent generational transference of acquired knowledge and cell differentiation (or why a cell becomes bone and not brain, for example).

– Steve Rouse