Cygnus Ensemble

Advanced tour of Brickle's Creation:

The Message in His Medium

His medium is the aggregate, and the message has to do with the expressive potential of the aggregate.

Brickle will be the first to tell anyone that thinking in aggregates (parcels of 12-notes) is a mixed bag, usually a real drag. It's something to let go of now, especially because it's been done so badly for so long. It became a bad habit.

While everyone's been getting over that bad habit, Brickle has figured out how to continue the old practice of thinking in aggregates without sounding anything like a 20th C. modernist.   It's also important to mention that Milton Babbitt has been writing ever more amazing superarray music.   (superarrays--a thing for managing aggregates)  Brickle's one of the few to appreciate this, and his great respect for Babbitt's achievement would make it repugnant to him to abandon aggregates.  

 Creation Opening (311.88 kB)

The F at the end of m. 7 completes the first aggregate of the piece, but in a manner that we might describe as suspiciously inconspicuous. I became suspicious after paying attention to the great fanfare around F at the end of the excerpt, the end of day 5.

 Creation End (323.17 kB)

This opening aggregate is a Trojan horse. It establishes the manner of the proceedings--the piece will proceed in aggregates, yet will retain the right to withold certain powers of the aggregate. [Note that the aggregate is made of partial aggregates specific to each instrument (obscured by orchestrational stuff). This is the powerful idea that Babbitt developed. Brickle adapted it to create music that's way too prettiy for Babbitt.]

We're talking about the "master aggregate", not the instrumental ones:

The completion of the aggregate with the F at the end of m. 7 is not a big moment. [Count the pitches. The last to pitch appear is the F at the end of m. 7. It therefor completes the first aggregate in the piece.] It's a nice passing tone-we would expect an F# instead of the F natural and it's striking in that modest way, but it's really a small matter. The opening phrase is more about setting up the minor-major 3rds, G-->G# in m. 2, and the [E,B] proceeding to [C,G] in m. 3 and then again in m. 8.