Performing ‘Songs, Clouds’ by Matt Sargent

"Songs, Clouds" is a piece for solo piano and electronics. The score is generated using GhostHunter, a library of spectral analysis and real-time notation tools, created by the composer. In Songs, Clouds, the score builds uniquely in real-time during each performance. Notes are introduced to the pianist on animated staves, slowly fading into view and then away again, using opacity as dynamic. The sounding result is like the turning of a hanging mobile: slow loops, overlapping to form harmony, falling in and out of shadows, always changing perspective. The pianist takes an active role, sculpting motives and contrapuntal lines from the animated notated material, as it drifts by on screen. The songs hidden in Songs, Clouds are derived from spectral analyses of William Billings's “New England Psalm Singer,” which also form the materials of Sargent's Separation Songs (a concert-length work for two string quartets). Sampled and resynthesized performance recordings of Separation Songs, along with synthesized variations of hymn tunes from the Billings, hide just beneath the surface of Songs, Clouds. The first half of Songs, Clouds is a process of gradual emergence: broken outlines of hidden songs, floating within silence. In the second half of the piece, the electronics open fully, creating clouds of ringing harmonies above a more thickly generated landscape of piano. - Matt Sargent