Blow-up

Premiere: Scott Deal, Fairbanks, Alaska, February 27, 1997

Blow-up seems an appropriate name for a percussion work, suggestive of loud, aggressive drum music. The title also refers to an expansion (akin to blowing up a photograph) where musical material is first heard at one speed and then in longer note values elsewhere. This kind of "blow-up" is at the heart of the ending of the piece. Lastly, the title is found literally in this final section in one of the synthesizer sounds.

Blow-up is in four sections: fast, fast, slow, fast; it is about ten minutes long. The opening and closing fast sections are dominated by drum and other "unpitched" sounds. The second part contrasts this by being made up entirely of pitched material in jazzy syncopated rhythms. Both of these two sections are followed by slow music which acts as a transition and/or buffer; this music returns in a new form in the chimes in the closing minute of the piece. The third section is soft and both melodically and rhythmically more simple than the preceding music.