JP MERZ COMPOSER
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JP MERZ COMPOSER
Out, out-
Watch:

​Listen:

​Instrumentation:
flute and interactive electronics
Premiered:
May 12, 2013: Sam Golter, a performance/lecture exploring the relations between bodies and technology in electroacoustic repertoire at Esch Hurvis Room, Appleton, WI. 

Additional performances:
April 25, 2015: Sonya Yeager-Meeks of Playground Ensemble at Metropolitan State University, Denver CO
April 17, 2017: 
Gerardo Lopez at University of Redlands, Redlands CA
​
Score:
    Download Perusal Score
About:   
Based on Robert Frost’s poem of the same name, itself a reference to Macbeth’s final soliloquy. This piece, like Frost’s poem, explores the sometimes violent relationship between people and technology. This drama is played out between the flute and the electronics, representing two oppositional forces. The piece opens powerfully, with both players creating a chaotic texture that eventually yields to a soft and pastoral flute melody. After an improvised cadenza, the melody becomes fragmented between explosive strikes  in the electronics. The piece ends with an electronically processed flute improvisation in which the flutist and the electronics respond to one another, signifying the dissolution and merging of the relationship between man and machine. 

   -Sam Golter

   The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard 
   And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, 
   Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. 
   - Opening lines of “Out, Out-” by Robert Frost 
   … 
   ... Out, out, brief candle! 
   Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
   That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
   And then is heard no more. It is a tale 
   Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury 
   Signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)


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