Color Music (Torke)
| Color Music | |
|---|---|
| by Michael Torke | |
| Key | Movement I: E Movement II: D major Movement III: E major Movement IV: F-sharp major Movement V: F minor |
| Genre |
Neoclassical music Post-minimalism |
| Composed | Movement I: June 1984 – February 1985: Movement II: 18 July 1985 – 1 September 1985: Movement III: 1986: Movement IV: 1987: Movement V: October 1988 – December 1988: |
| Performed | Movement I: 16 May 1985: New York City Movement II: 23 November 1985: New York City Movement III: 20 November 1986: Milwaukee, Wisconsin Movement IV: 11 June 1987: New York City Movement V: 3 February 1989: St. Paul, Minnesota |
| Movements | 5 |
| Scoring | Orchestra (Movement V, also chamber orchestra) |
Color Music is a suite of five different compositions for orchestra by American composer Michael Torke. The suite is well known for its association with the composer's synesthesia.
When Michael Torke was studying musical composition in Yale University, he decided to start an early series of compositions "to celebrate without modulation a single color". As Torke himself puts it in the original program note for Ecstasic Orange:
Certain musical ideas make me think of colors. This personal synesthesia contributed its own vibrancy to my attitude towards the material. In the end, different shades of paint splash around the orchestral forces, but it is always some hue of orange.
Even though Torke wrote many more pieces with color titles, the suite consists only of five compositions, written between 1984 and 1988. The order of the movements in this suite has not been established, as the compositions were originally conceived separately, and have not been published together. Therefore, the Color Music label is merely a name to refer to the compositions included in it, and has been used in recordings, but not in its original publishing house, Boosey and Hawkes.
The list of compositions, sorted by year of composition, is as follows:
This composition was originally composed between June 1984 and February 1985 under the commission of ASCAP and Meet the Composer and was premiered in May 16, 1985. The premiere was carried out by the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the baton of Lukas Foss at Copper Union in New York City. It is dedicated to Beth Roberts.
According to musical critic Andrew Porter, the composition is in E. However, according to the composer, the "static material", that is, the tonal center of the composition gravitates towards a six note melody, G#-A-D-C#-B-E, which is never varied or transformed, but rather put in different context. The rhythmic pulse of the composition is based on a constant, insisting line formed by sixteenth notes.
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