How to Become an Idea
A concert-length diptych of metaphysical solos for violin, written for Christopher Otto, founding member of the JACK Quartet.
The two pieces that make up the program come out of remembering my childhood curiosity about where I was before I existed. They are experiments—and invitations—to try to recover the feeling of pre-existence.
To achieve this, each piece presents a musical image that leads inward. They aim at the same kind of bodylessness and memorylessness we experience for an instant at the exact edge of sleep and then forget.
The transcendental intentions of the music echo projects like Coil’s Time Machines and Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations. This is an undertaking that the entire audience, as well as the performer, attempt to experience together within the space of the performance.
In Eden Melody, the violin plays a gentle melody in a rocking rhythm. Subliminally, every note is tuned purely to the note that comes just before it, ignoring any of the concessions that allow systems of tuning to be self-consistent.
These accumulating perfections cause the pitch to drift further and further down the lowest string on the violin throughout the course of the piece, as the melody loses awareness of anything but the present moment.
In Time Escape Harmony, the violin is retuned to be as resonant as possible by using only two different pitches, A and D. These are also the only pitches used within the music’s slow sequence of chords and silences.
The music progresses intuitively within this restricted, cyclic space, in which the shifting voicings and timbres become magnified out of proportion into their own world inside the harmonies.
Each piece is 40–45 minutes, and can also be performed individually under its own title. Ideally, the concert space is completely dark except for a lamp casting the violinist’s shadow.
How to Become an Idea was first performed by Christopher Otto on April 23, 2025 at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, NY.