A Spectrum of the Coming Snows

Sometimes a piece jumps right the Sam Hill out of nowhere and snaps at your heels, unrelenting until the second you write an article about it.  Such is the case with a piece uploaded just an hour ago on Inciptisify, arguably the premiere channel for disseminating pieces by young contemporary composers (I've featured it before).  It's composer, Sehyung Kim, is only a year older than me and has so far slipped past my radar, but his Korean-Kazakh heritage is enough for at least a peek.  That peek takes the form of six bars of varying length for piano.

(Click for larger view)

Sijo is an ancient Korean poetic form that explores deep metaphysical and natural questions with a strict syllabic form.  The Wikipedia article goes over it much better than I can, but sijo already appeals to me for its haunting brevity and heightened evocation.  Kim has composed a bunch of them, as evidenced by worklists and his Soundcloud, which is where Inciptisify got the recording for Sijo_280412, "der Schnee kommt".  The numbers refer to the date when the piece was composed, and with this kind of micro-piece titling becomes a non-issue - John Cage eventually abandoned titles, as well as the I-swear-to-God-his-time-on-this-blog-is-coming Gardner Jencks.  In case you're wondering, "Der Schnee kommt" means "the snow comes", which is exactly what I'm taking bets on now considering I live near Seattle and snow is about as consistent as lightning strikes.

Sijo_280412 is an egg of resonant simplicity.  It's a philosophical puzzle: while different keys of the piano are struck, the placement of a finger on different parts of the strings results in the same pitch (sort of) sounding for all of them.  Are there eight different pitches or only various shades of one?  His organization is also elegant.  The small numbers above each harmonic refer to their order in the overtone series - 7 was skipped presumably to keep the tight 4-to-4 ratio between the first and second staves intact (and it might have sounded gross).  The pauses reveal an interesting architecture: decreasing in length in one way, increasing the next, and circling the drain in the third.  The final line also circles the harmonics before bringing the piece back to the natural E.  The wide spaces between the thunking, gong-like E's perfectly evoke the muted, desolate beauty of a snowy landscape, the more disparate harmonics even reminding the listener of the crunch of a boot penetrating the surface.  You can look in all directions and infer the changing landscape, but it's all enveloped by the E - static, immense but ultimately fragile, as one slip of the finger on the string brings it all down.  Daylight Savings Time is finally over, and the cold months are done lying in wait, so Kim's Sijo couldn't be more timely.  Well, maybe if there was actual snow.  I live in Seattle, so that day seems unlikely to come.

Crap.

~PNK