Thomas Clark – composer / digital artist

Tag: Black Canyon of the Gunnison

  • Canyon Sketches

    2024 . . . synthesized soundscape (14 minutes)

    Three sound sketches explore the timeless qualities of three magnificent canyons: Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Colorado); Glacier Gorge in Rocky Mountain National Park; and Palo Duro Canyon (Texas). Actually, each sketch began fundamentally based not so much on the canyons as on musical techniques.

    2024 . . . chamber orchestra version (12 minutes)

    A complex three-part canon of meandering 12-tone lines musically sketches the colorful streaks of pegmatite dikes in the Black Canyon’s cliff walls of Precambrian gneiss.

    1. Black Canyon

    Downward plunging arpeggios experience relentless musical gravity, sounding out the energetic fall of whitewater over boulders.

    2. Glacier Gorge

    Gently changing kaleidoscopic sonorities and a slow descending progression of pitch constellations to stillness express the timeless quiet of Palo Duro Canyon.

    3. Palo Duro dusk

    Score excerpts:

    Email the composer to request a PDF of the complete 47-page full score and 14 parts.

    tc24@txstate.edu

  • Aristotle’s Elements

    2022 . . . four sound sculptures for orchestra (15:30)

    One feature of my modern-music and composition e-book Mapping the Music Universe is a set of composing experiments called MapLabs. Each provides lab instructions to gather material and make compositional choices, and each provides an example piece built step by step along the path of the lab instructions. The sample pieces for the first four MapLabs fit together here as the metaphorical elements, fire, air, water, and earth, of Aristotle’s concept of the world’s physical matter. My mostly abstract photo images provide a visual background for listening.

    Where the amber atoms in the fire gleaming
    Mingled their sarabande with the gymnopaedia.     (Latour)

    Fresh wind weds the land and water,
    Sun warms bright sails and sailor.

    Where tiny Otter Creek trickled out onto a more secluded sandy beach
    Offering northward a spectacular view of Empire Bluff    .

    The Black Canyon of the Gunnison, named for the ever-present shadows
    The narrow canyon’s steep, sheer, tall rock walls cast on the river flowing far below.

    Aristotle’s Elements

    These images are set in motion by the magic of various Ken Burns effects for a video version on the TClark Art Music YouTube channel.

    In another arrangement transcribed for wind ensemble in 2023, the order is changed:

    I. Amber Atoms (FIRE) 4:46
    II. Fresh Wind (AIR) 3:40
    III. Black Canyon (EARTH) 3:12
    IV. Otter Creek (WATER) 3:04