Beschreibung
Trinony was composed from a small motif, which is heard in the flute part at the very beginning. I found this little passage as I was improvising on a piano one night for fun. I kept dancing around this short idea, and it eventually stuck with me. The majority of the piece is derived from this in some sense, and focuses heavily on the tritone. The tritone, which is a raised 4th or lowered 5th from any given note (i.e. f sharp from c), has a very harsh, dissonant tone, and is the farthest note away from the tonic note. Its timbral qualities are very unique, and because of its “ugliness,” it used to be called the Devil's interval. I, however, absolutely love tritones, and figured there must be a way to create a piece that is audibly pleasant to most listeners that incorporates this interval as a primary motif. Tritones are very hard to keep in tune, and can really throw the performers off from the tonality, demanding experienced players with a huge amount of focus. The primary development takes place through transformations, such as a retrograde (playing the piece in reverse) and transposition, as certain sections are moved around, often chromatically, while retaining their original interval values. The piece starts off slow, and gradually, via rhythmic diminution (shortening the note durations), synthetically gains speed up to an accelerando. This brings us to a machine-like section, fast and powerful. The piece recapitulates to another slow section, and finally, as a surprise ending, moves to one last and fastest section. The name, “Trinony,” derives from the tritone motif that drives the piece.