Conference Agenda

The purpose of this lecture-recital will be to examine the role and context of “found objects” in the solo percussion repertoire. The classification of “found objects” are often open ended and frequently conflated with junk percussion or other commonly found household objects. Much of this stems from the varying goals of any given piece and what the objects are meant to achieve or represent in the piece’s context. For example, a brake drum may represent the construction of a railroad in a piece like Copland’s John Henry because the timbres are similar. But a brake drum could also be treated as its own solo instrument, capable of producing a variety of unique timbres and textures as heard in Matthew Burtner’s Broken Drum. In the majority of percussion reference material, found objects often find themselves relegated to an “imitative” category, prioritizing the materials and pitch capabilities of other percussion instruments as factors of demarcation. I intend to show through my lecture-recital that found objects can, and often are, utilized beyond the scope of timbral mimetics. It is my goal to establish a taxonomy for categorizing these objects and perform several works that demonstrate the versatility of found objects in select solo percussion works. It is my hope that this research will not only serve percussionists looking to explore this repertoire, but that it may serve as a guide for composers looking to write for found objects.

Part of my research has necessitated a survey of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials about percussion to see how scholars have commonly cataloged and identified the different types of percussion instruments. Additionally, I have also surveyed some texts on the history and development of western musical instruments, which also organizes percussion instruments in a similar fashion. There is currently no research solely devoted to found objects or “junk percussion”; rather, the appearance of these terms in any academic discourse related to percussion is circumstantial to whichever piece incorporates these objects.

To illustrate my research, I’ve devised a prototype graph onto which I’ll assign locations for various works based on a criterion of materials and purpose. While this graph allows for a greater degree of flexibility for pieces/objects to be located anywhere - and in some cases - multiple categories at once, the purpose of my lecture-recital will provide a somewhat cursory overview of each of the following four major categories: raw materials that have been transformed; artificial materials that have been transformed; raw materials that remain relatively unchanged; and artificial materials that remain relatively unchanged. I will then perform a piece that I believe can be sufficiently situated in each category.

There is one additional factor worth mentioning here, which concerns the subject of transformation. I am choosing to reject Cage’s assertion that any object capable of producing a sound may be deemed a musical instrument, because by that logic, every object regardless of material automatically becomes “transformed.” Instead, I argue that transformation requires some intentional element on either the part of the composer, performer, or both. For this project, transformation will be determined by either the physical transformation of an object (for example, the ice blocks melting in real time during a performance of Vivian Fung’s The Ice is Talking) or an artistic or musical transformation (as in Cathy van Eyck’s Groene Ruis, in which the relationship between a hair dryer and a houseplant represent the relationship between the relationship between humans and nature).

The recital portion of my lecture-recital features four pieces that illustrate the different ways found objects have been utilized in the percussion repertoire to showcase their own timbral qualities in addition to transforming those qualities for a larger narrative purpose. The use of natural and artificial materials further underpins the theme of "materials that matter" as these works often examine how humans leverage found objects for their artistic goals.