throwing the ladder away

About

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." - Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The inside of the piano provides a unique acoustic space with particular resonant qualities. throwing the ladder away attempts to explore the character of this acoustic space, especially the subtle transition between sound and silence that results when resonating strings are allowed to decay naturally (i.e. without dampers being applied to the strings). As well as "repositories" for resonance, the extended silences near the beginning of the piece are also important structurally, playing on the relationship between perceptual activity (or inactivity) and our cognition of the passing (or accumulation) of time. Throughout the piece the use of the vertical pitch space is carefully controlled so as to leave a distinct "spatial" impression that is somehow "folded into" the temporal aspect.