Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
Percussion Trio (13 mins)
Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously takes its title from a semantic paradox created by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, which challenged the traditional belief of meaning and grammar as inseparable elements of language.
The piece was written as part of the bi-annual Konstruct collaboration between HIIIT (formerly Slagwerk Den Haag) and Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag called Konstruct. Three percussionists and three composers work together over several months to put together a centre-piece event at Korzo Theatre with coaching and support from HIIIT.
The composition of the piece is also inspired by this paradox – rhythmical material and instrumental timbre are continually separated and reconstituted resulting in uncanny variations of the same core idea. The piece itself is a triptych, constructed through a series of tiling canons which undergo continual transformations and permutations throughout the piece.
Percussion List
Percussion 1: Tabletop Percussion (high & low membranes, high & low wood, high & low non-resonant metal), Bell Tree, Sandpaper Block, Bell Plate (E), Vibraphone
Percussion 2: Tabletop Percussion (high & low membranes, high & low wood, high & low non-resonant metal, Tibetan Bowl C#, Crotale C), Sandpaper Block, Custom-made Overtone Bell Tubes (tuned to F fundamental)
Percussion 3: Tabletop Percussion (high & low membranes, high & low wood, high & low non-resonant metal, Tibetan Bowl C, Crotale D), Sandpaper Block, Custom-made Overtone Bell Tubes (tuned to C fundamental)
