On the evenings of November 6 and 7, 2015, Glenn Prestwich of Sounds of Science Commissioning Club (SOSCC), interviewed Switch composer Andrew Norman. The following are edited excerpts from that interview.

SOSCC: Andrew, can you describe the concept behind Switch, which you describe in the notes as “a game of control”. Tell us more about this concept and how your music explores it.

Andrew: Each percussion instrument is a switch that controls other instruments in specific ways, making them play louder or softer, higher or lower, freezing them in place, and setting them in motion again. The soloist, dropped into this complex contraption of causes and effect, like the unwitting protagonist of a video game, must figure out the rules of this universe on the fly, all while trying to avoid the rewind-inducing missteps that prevent their progress from one side of the stage to the other.

SOSCC: So, that’s interesting. For me, the concept of a switch is more biochemical. All of our physiology is controlled by molecular switches, and control in space and time is essential for our bodies to function properly. In scientific terms, we think of switches as causes with physiological effects. Can you talk to us about cause and effect in this piece?

Andrew: Absolutely. It is 100% about cause and effect. The soloists triggers sounds in an X implies Y fashion, but in Switch it is different than cause and effect in traditional classical music. There, harmony and form provide expectations and achieve balance. Tominant resolves to tonic, exposition of theme leads to development and recapitulation. In contrast, Switch becomes its own universe with its own unique set of rules. Some can be readily heard, some not, but the piece visually and aurally is a self-contained entity.

SOSCC: Andrew, you’ve described the slapsticks as one of the “switches”, the “cosmic channel changers”. Can you explain your thinking?

Andrew: Instead of being broken into traditional movements, Switch exists as a system of different “channels” each with its own unique sound world, that are flipped between by the playful (and devious) snaps of the channel-surfing slapsticks at the back of the stage.

SOSCC: Can you elaborate about how you have created a universe that has a set of rules? What are those some of those rules?

Andrew: For example, the slapsticks are “cosmic channel changers.” There are simultaneous stories always in progress underneath the surface, and the slapstick switches from one story to a new story, picking up in the middle of the story. The feeling is one of tension, anticipating next interruption that may last a few measures, a few seconds, or a few minutes before the story changes again

SOSCC: Another analogy that you have used is that of a pinball game, with Colin actually identifying himself as the pinball. Tell us about how we will see and hear this tonight.

Andrew: Live performances, in this case a world premiere, emphasizes visual experience and physicality of the performance. The audience is the first to see as well as first to hear, the premiere. Emphasize the living nature – a play not a movie – of the piece. Be sure to watch the choreography of the soloist, Colin Currie, as he attempts to make it across the stage from his running entry from stage L to his quiet, slow disappearance from stage R. During the process whenever the strings do a massive 2-measure gliss, that’s a reset button that requires him to “start over”. Thus, he feels like he’s the pinball in an orchestral pinball machine.

SOSCC: For myself, I actually connected to this piece through a scientific analogy, which you and I discussed a few days ago. If the orchestra is the body, then the sections of the orchestra are tissues, and the individual players are cells. In this context, the soloist is the brain and central nervous system, both in control yet under the control of the body’s tissues and cells. Moreover, the three percussionists in the back of the orchestra act in communicating between the tissues and the brain, sort of the peripheral nervous system.

Andrew: That makes total sense to me, because the orchestra is a living, dynamic organism with a great degree of physicality and movement that gives artistic interest to the live performance.

SOSCC: You’ve said that percussion is both the ultimate challenge and the true essence of music. What do you mean by that?

Andrew: Percussion is the ultimate in interpretating a bizarre and often piece-unique lexicon of symbols and converting them into sound and music. It requires the percussionist to go deeper into the nature of the sound than simply what the symbology alone provides. Moreover, percussion has no standard notation; it’s like rearranging the keys on a piano for each piece. Indeed, in this piece and others I’ve composed, I expand the lexicography for the strings, expanding with new symbols to evoke more percussive and more extended types of sounds from the instruments.

SOSCC: Tell us about “sampling,” and how the main melody is fragmented, like a jigsaw puzzle that Colin is trying to use his control to reassemble.

Andrew: The concept here is like that of “sampling” – a common technique in hip-hop and other musical modalities from baroque to jazz to pop. Small motifs or bits are extracted out of an established, recorded piece and built into a new work by manipulating the extracted motifs. In Switch, this occurs throughout, but you are always feeling dropped into the middle of something still being assembled.

SOSCC: Any final comments?

Andrew: Abstract or absolute music is a model for how my composer’s brain works. The music exists in time but in its abstract form in my mind; there are many random, unpredictable connection and tangents, distractions, getting stuck, etc. Ultimately, I convert this abstract form into notation that musicians can then recreate and reinterpret into a physically exciting musical performance that communicates my concepts to the audience.