Mesh Mask for solo harpsichord
Jacob Gotlib
Š 2012
Program notes: As a child, I first learned to consciously adjust the focus of my eyes by staring at my backyard through the mesh screen on the kitchen window. To my delight, I found that I could impose an even, orderly grid onto the world, and then with the slightest movement of my eyes, make the screen fade away to a smooth and unbroken world. Tiny muscular adjustments could radically shift my perspective from a world that is sliced into constrained, equal bits into one that is boundless and uninterrupted. In Mesh Mask, constant tremolos and hand alternations create a screen of fast, discrete attacks that obscure slow and continuous changes in harmony and register. From time to time, the focus shifts and the screen is ruptured, allowing the material behind it to poke through and assert itself in varying degrees. Mesh Mask is lovingly dedicated to my pet hedgehog, Ormsby, whose anatomical duality of a barbed exterior and soft underside -- opposing qualities which are somehow fused in his complex and baffling personality -- inspired many of the phrases and figures in the piece.
Technical notes Mesh Mask is designed to be performed on a 5-octave (F1-F6), double-manual harpsichord. The registration for both manuals is single 8’, which remains constant throughout the piece.
General notes: Accidentals apply only to the notes on which they are found; except for naturals, they do not carry over if a note is repeated within the measure. Accidentals also do not carry over between hands; for example, if an A!3 appears in the left hand and simultaneously there is an A3 without an accidental the right hand, the pitch in the right hand is an A". Each hand is assigned its own manual which remains constant throughout the piece: the left hand plays on the bottom manual (II), and the right hand plays on the top manual (I). Occasionally, as in section B, the hands briefly cross registers, where the right hand is lower than the left and vice versa. All notes should be held for their full duration when technically possible. For sections A and B the durations are necessarily very short, but the longer durations in section C should be more carefully controlled to achieve the mosaic effect. While the tempo should remain constant and rhythms motoric throughout most of the work, there are figures in sections B and C that contain a mixture of uneven durations, grace note interruptions, and unmeasured tremolos (see m. 50 or m. 65 as an example). These figures can be played slightly more freely to emphasize their disruptive and unstable qualities.
Notational notes: Noteheads occur only at the beginning of measures, changes in pitch, or where it would be unclear otherwise. Stems without noteheads indicate to continue the previous note or chord for that particular hand. Each large phrase (between 1-8 measures long) is designated with grace note chords at the beginning of the measure. Usually these are in a distinct register from the rest of the music in the phrase, and require a slight pause beforehand to perform. Two slash marks at the top of a measure are a courtesy warning sign indicating that a new phrase (and subsequent pause and registral jump) will begin in the next measure. Occasionally, the notation for unmeasured tremolos within a tuplet figure may seem confusing. However, the total duration of the tremolo is indicated by the total duration of the two chords. For example, here are the first three beats of m.45:
These figures contain mixtures of 16th-note hand alternations and 8th note tremolos. If this passage were to be rewritten solely rhythmically, it would look like the following:
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