Orchestration

for solo percussion and electronics (2012)
for percussion quartet and electronics (2016)

Duration

23 minutes

Commissioned by/Premiere

The original solo version was made possible by a grant from the American Composers Forum/JFund for a consortium of ten percussionists; first performed June 20, 2012 at The Stone, New York, NY by Owen Weaver. The version for percussion quartet was commissioned by the LA Percussion Quartet and premiered at Chapman University’s MUSCO Center for the Arts on April 10, 2016. Memory Palace is dedicated to Owen Weaver.

Score

Purchase from Project Schott New York: solo version / quartet version.

Listen

The solo recording is also available from iTunes/Apple Music | Amazon.

Electronics

Download electronics. Memory Palace is an electroacoustic work. In addition to performing, the percussionist is asked to cue a series of prerecorded samples that blend seamlessly with the live performance. These samples are cued with a midi foot pedal in a simple application built in Max/MSP. The application also provides amplification and reverb settings to create the proper ambiance. At a minimum, the guitar and bottles should be amplified. In the quartet version, click tracks may be used for movements II and III, and players 3 and 4 must use click tracks in movement IV; the patch includes all the necessary clicks.

Note

Memory Palace is a kind of paean to places and people that have deeply affected me. The title refers to an ancient technique of memorization that helped orators remember very long speeches by placing mental signposts in an imaginary location and ‘walking’ through it. In this piece, the palace is my life. The crickets in the first movement, ‘Harriman’, were recorded on a camping trip with two old and dear friends. The recording of windchimes in the third movement was recorded at my parents’ backyard. The sounds in the piece are the signposts; they help me remember—and more important, understand—who I am.

The majority of the instruments in Memory Palace are to be fashioned by the percussionist. This includes restringing a cheap guitar, cutting and tuning fourteen slats of wood (to be played like a marimba), tuning ten metal pipes, and tuning wine bottles by filling them with varying amounts of water. Ideally, the instruments should not be expensive to make; simple household items (and maybe a trip to your local hardware store) should suffice. In addition, a few traditional percussion instruments are used: three loose crotales, two glockenspiel bars, and a kick drum.

Memory Palace is dedicated to Owen Weaver.

Note on the quartet version

When I was asked by the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet to write a new piece this past year, I realized that between a forthcoming new work for mezzo-soprano and percussion quartet and an existing solo percussion piece—Memory Palace—that it wasn’t quite my moment to write a third piece in that medium. However, as I spoke to the quartet and got a sense of their musicality and enthusiasm, the thought occurred to me perhaps I did have something additional to say. I suggested that Memory Palace, which is originally scored for solo percussionist and electronics, could become a brand new work as a quartet. In the original version, one percussionist makes a series of new instruments out of found objects and performs live with resonant electronic drones. The downside of this is that the result is a one-way dialogue between soloist and the drones. I wondered if by transcribing the drones acoustically—for vibraphone, marimbas, and Tibetan singing bowls—the work could take on a life as true chamber music, with each of the parts truly interacting with one another. In the process, new connections were made: now that the piece features both found objects and more traditional percussion instruments, the piece becomes about the interaction between “found” and “traditional” instruments as much as anything else.— Christopher Cerrone, Fall 2015, Rome

Almost every object struck, plucked, or blown in Memory Palace, a 22-minute work for amplified percussion and electronics, has to be made by the percussionist. The rest—a few bars from a glockenspiel, three high-pitched crotales, and the kick from a drum set—have been disembodied from their original context.

In the first movement, ‘Harriman’, the performer plucks a re-strung guitar lying on its back—a kind of makeshift dulcimer. The second movement, ‘Power Lines’ is scored for seven slats of wood, carefully tuned by sawing them to the correct length. The third, ‘Foxhurst’, is a forest of bells: tuned metal pipes alongside the aforementioned glockenspiel bars and crotales. The fourth movement, ‘L.I.E.’, adds even more wooden slats, creating polyphony from the homophony of ‘Power Lines’. The last movement, ‘Claremont’, features six blown bottles, tuned to different pitches with varying amounts of water. In each movement, the percussionist also triggers a series of electronic drones using a foot pedal, a resonant background aura that enhances the live music throughout.

Each movement is titled for a personally important place. Harriman, NY is where I spent a week camping with two of the musicians who have most influenced me. Against the crickets of the woods, I imaged music of simplicity and familiarity. ‘Power Lines’ is a hard grid of glowing high-voltage wires, their intersecting patterns seen from a moving car. ‘Foxhurst’ is named for the street I grew up on, and uses the windchimes which rang throughout my childhood. ‘L.I.E’ (Long Island Expressway) is another automotive movement, evoking the rumble strips on the side of a highway, their rhythmic pulsing playing against steady drone of the car’s motor. ‘Claremont’ is the street of my college—with another close friend, I had tuned two full octaves of beer bottles where we kept them as a household instrument.

By stringing these places together, I wanted to create a memory palace, a virtual series of locations I can “walk” through in my head, remember some important things from my life and how they have shaped me.

Press

The most obvious traits of percussion in the orchestral realm are sheer power, intensity and terror — both overt, in-your-face terror and a subtler undercurrent of fear. Percussion is often used to create a color, a shimmer, a sparkle or crashing waves. The sounds we can make are limitless because our instruments actually are limitless; percussion is defined as anything one shakes, scrapes or strikes, and this is why I chose Christopher Cerrone’s “Memory Palace.” Almost all the instruments in this piece are D.I.Y.: planks of wood, pieces of pipe, bowls and bottles. It showcases the versatility of percussion — the range of instruments, the creation of rhythm, melody, harmony, character and mood.

Cynthia Yeh, NY Times