Aaron Gervais, composer » community-normed

Continuum: SHIFT tour

Aaron Gervais — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:44:15 +0000

Performance of Community-Normed at Aberdeen’s Sound Festival

Continuum: INform

Aaron Gervais — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:49:03 +0000

Première of Community-Normed, as part of the SoundaXis festival.

Community-Normed

Aaron Gervais — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:59:05 +0000

Only a small part of music is actually about sound. The majority of music-making has to do with social interactions more than anything else. Music fulfills certain functions (usually pre-determined) within certain social situations, or serves as a replacement for various social functions when we use it in private. Therefore, music can be said to be a community-normed phenomenon: what makes music music are the people who find a use for it, usually by listening.

On top of that, the most useful (or best) pieces of music are generally those for which there is the most consensus on usage: Beethoven’s ninth symphony and Michale Jackson’s album, Thriller are both “good” because a lot of people agree that they are good; i.e., a lot of people have found those two pieces of music useful for certain social functions.

Anyway, these were some of the thoughts running through my head while writing this piece, and they influenced my choice and usage of musical materials.

Jackhammer Lullaby

Aaron Gervais — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:53:49 +0000

Jackhammer Lullaby is an arrangement of Community-Normed, which was commissioned by the Continuum Ensemble in Toronto in 2008. I’ve become increasingly interested in presenting pieces in multiple versions and combinations. Jackhammer Lullaby, with a few changes, is also the middle movement of Community-Normed. I’ve also written a third version, for a chamber music conference in Vermont in July 2009, with different instrumentation and adapted for amateur performers.

Why multiple versions? Because music today is multiple. Everyone is exposed to music from multiple cultures all the time, from multiple time periods, and in multiple versions. DJs remix pop songs, which are available in numerous versions, and do mash-ups that intertwine multiple tracks in the space of a few seconds. I think this is a good way to deal with the fact that we are, for the first time in history, drowning in more music than anyone knows what to do with. For this reason, creating multiple versions is an important project of mine.

Musically, Jackhammer Lullaby presents a humorous musical setting of trying to fall asleep with construction going on outside the window.