Ripple Study I (2025)

General Information

Movements:
Cycles I - VII: Concurrence Study
Cycles VII - XV: Dissipation Study
Cycles XVI - XXIII: Constructive Interference Study

Commissioner: Written for the USC Composition Department Spring 2025 Showcase
Written: January – February, 2025
Duration: ca. 6.5’
Instrumentation: glockenspiel, vibraphone, celesta, and harpsichord

Performance History

March 7, 2025: Marcos Salgado (glockenspiel), Preston Spisak (vibraphone), David Shou (celesta), and Benjamin Beckman (harpsichord) at the Spring 2025 USC Composition Department Showcase, Newman Hall, Los Angeles, CA (World Premiere)

Live Performance Video

Program Note

Ripple Study I is the first in a planned series of pieces exploring rhythmic dilation and contraction. The sonic product reminds me of watching ripples dissipate on a pond surface. In the first part of the study, two groupings of instruments – celesta and glockenspiel, and harpsichord and vibraphone – move through a series of cycles where each group's material acts independently of the other, though there often happen to be synchronistic features of the music given their concurrence (as if one through stones in two different ponds and watched each pond's ripple pattern simultaneously). The second part of the study features "ripple chains" in the two groups of instruments, though while each group begins independently, the musical material comes to rest in unison (as if two stones were thrown into the same pond, and one were to watch the ripples effect each other before the pond comes to rest at one moment in time). The third and final part of the study highlights the natural and acoustic phenomenon of constructive interference, where colliding waveforms can cause each to be amplified at the moment of impact. –BSB