Ann Cleare

For keyboard instrument (accordion/harpsichord/organ/piano) and electronics

The title ‘I am not a clockmaker either.’ is taken from the writings of Morton Feldman. In this work, the quote signifies my investigation of sonic, temporal and spatial structures, and their continuously shifting priorities as they are reconstructed into alternative sonic morphologies.

The piece sets into motion a physical force which dissects the instrument into acute shards or material and reconstitutes it in a completely restructured manner. As if one were to take the pieces of a broken egg and glue them back together in such a way that the original oval shape is hardly recognisable.

Through this forceful dissection also comes disruption: as one sonic particle takes lead, it is interrupted, resulting in a new form or organisation emerging: each element of the disorganisation being recontextualised within the next disorganisation. This deconstructive force creates a motion that breaks, ruptures, diverts, convolutes, and coils up on itself so that fragments of the accordion are pulverised together, swirl around one another like clouds, rotate, implode or turn themselves inside out.

Also the space in which the placing and direction of these objects is continuously revaluated: as a certain spatial motion evolves, another intervenes, scrambling it and so a spatial direction of a different nature emerges. These perspectival shifts allow one to zoom in and out on certain fragments of the resynthesised instrument.

Listen to a version for accordion and electronics: 

Look: i am not a clockmaker either – patch image

Look at an excerpt and purchase the score from PSNY: https://www.eamdc.com/psny/composers/ann-cleare/works/i-am-not-a-clockmaker-either/