Perpetuum mobile: Beckett in Berio

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Beckett in Berio

Mahler. Symphony no. 2, movement III (of V), 1888 - 94.
Marked "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung":

Berio. Sinfonia, movement III (of V), 1968 - 69.
Marked "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung":

"... this represents at least a thousand words I wasn't counting on ..."

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The Story of Piraye and Trevor (as told by Piraye)

September 1996, Trevor’s shoulder length sandy blond hair is tied back in a neat ponytail. The Carothers Hall common room has a grand piano. With fury and focus, Trevor performs a piece he composed at 14, and then at 16. I am 17, Trevor is 20. We are students in the Plan II Honors program at University of Texas in Austin. Gato negro, The Rite of Spring, Les Amis, Nate’s blue hair and green tea, Bela Bartok, Gaulois, clavichords and trees.

We lose touch when Trevor graduates and travels to Italy the same year I travel to study Biochimie at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. The next year, I am at a Starbucks with my boyfriend Andy from study abroad. We are discouraged from a fruitless week of job hunting so that he can move to the states. We are killing time before a film starts. Trevor is at the same Starbucks, and happens to be hiring computer programmers for the Silicon Hills start up he is running. Andy makes a good approximation of how many petrol stations are in Australia among other Plan II math inspired interview questions and Trevor hires him.

Fast forward Lucinda’s wedding, New York City. Empire-Fulton State park, on a perfectly sunny day in the shadow of the Brooklyn bridge. Trevor is composing again.

May 2008, back in Austin. I have just defended and completed my PhD thesis at Cornell University’s Medical College, a painful 6 month separation from the world beyond the mammalian ooctye. Trevor nurses me back to social and intellectual health with Pinot Gris, Thai curry soup, mint gelato, cats, and dolphin linguistics. Apparently, they have syntax too. We agree to a trans-Atlantic musico-biological collaboration. Back in New York, having just brainstormed over brunch on Madison Avenue about the seemingly perpetual motion of biological machines, I am listening to the Rach 3 and reading Lewis Lapham’s thoughts on money.

It strikes me that though we possess 5 human senses, we present biological data as 2D, sometimes 3D, images embedded in the pages of journals. Alternatively, if we could hear enzymes as they work, perhaps we would have a more intuitive way of understanding molecular motions. It also occurs to me that extracting frequency information from these motions, through data such as those produced by the application of single molecule FRET methods to studying enzyme dynamics, would be an ideal point of departure for a musical collaboration with Trevor.

I text message Trevor, and thus moto perpetuo è nato.

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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Beckett in Berio

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The Story of Piraye and Trevor (as told by Piraye)

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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Beckett in Berio

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The Story of Piraye and Trevor (as told by Piraye)

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