Micro Fictions

Richard Kostelanetz

Micro Fictions was first presented on Friday, February 27, 2009, at Judson Church, as part of The Human Voice in a New World, a three-concert series produced by Electronic Music Foundation.

The Micro Fictions project began when Richard Kostelanetz called me to ask if I’d be interested in working on a composition with him. Richard, who I’ve known for some time, has been called the world’s most experimental writer. His interests during the past many years have included a great variety of literary forms, including extreme minimalism, one example of it being stories and narratives told as or within single words, each of which suggests a narrative. The specific project he had in mind for me to compose a series of settings for his Micro Fictions. I thought of it as an interesting idea. In fact, as an opportunity. I understood my task to be that of composing musical settings that would complement the words, enhance the narrative, and expand the experience of each word with the sounds that I composed.

I like to point out that my settings for these words were all based on the sounds of the words themselves, which I transformed electronically. But my principal intent, of course, was to dramatize the words in different ways. The dramatic quality for “freedom”, for example, was exuberance, as in an unmistakenly electronic ‘bell’. For ‘self improvement’ and “dieting”, it was humor in the sense of not taking those tasks seriously. For “menacing’, the sound suggests a growling animal. For “deluge”, it was an electronic rainfall. For “infinity”, it was the suggestion of time passing without nuance. For “mesmerizing”, it was a soft and hypnotic sound.

Of the 45 words that Richard recorded, I finally chose seven. The words and the durations of the accompanying sounds are:

Freedom 0:17
Self Improvement 0:06
Dieting 0:14
Menacing 1:20
Deluge 2:11
Infinity 1:31
Mesmerizing 4:27

The recitation of the words is Richard Kostelanetz.

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For other compositions, click on a title

Blues Mix 1966
Albany Music 3 1966
Jack in January 1967
Street Scene 1967

Drift 1970
Ideas of Movement at Bolton Landing 1971
Echoes 1972

From The 14th On 1973

Flowers 1975
Settings for Spirituals 1977

Solo 1978
Scenes from Stevens 1979
Follow Me Softly 1984

After Some Songs 1995
Spring Drum with Pierre’s Words 1997

Many Times … 2001
One World 1 2006
Micro Fictions 2009
Different Cities 2013