Thao

Thao is the composition with which I began my exploration into the Thai classical tradition. While it is not the first work in which I engaged explicitly with non-Western traditions, it is the first one to draw specifically upon the Thai classical tradition and the first in which nearly all aspects of the composition are guided by a self-conscious ethic of cross-cultural composition. This ethic, which I have continued to develop to this day, is manifest here as an attempt to seek a hybrid character to all musical parameters. With this early work, those were mostly formal parameters, such as scales, pitch inflections, ensemble organization, rhythm and meter and instrumental style. The combination of instruments is loosely affiliated with the Thai mahori ensemble, with the contrabass taking the role of the drums and the ching (handbell) expanding its role as timekeeper to that of an ensemble conductor (in the manner of the drums in a Balinese gamelan). The individual instrumental characters and the structure in which they play variations of the same melody simultaneously is directly inspired by this structure in Thai classical music.

And the formal concept, called thao, after which is piece is titled and in which a melody is expanded and contracted proportionately, is the basis for the form of this work (although the sections appear in a non-traditional order: medium-fast-slow). These sections alternate with bold and rhythmically irregular unisons that were inspired by the rhythms of the Balinese gamelan gong kebyar, an ensemble which I had studied and performer prior to focusing on Thai musics as an area of research. For me, this piece is a moment frozen in time, marked by a shifting of interest the extent of which I could not know at the time, and colored by curious mis-understandings about Thai classical music that were the product of having just begun to learn as a student of the tradition.

Please note this work requires three percussionists, one playing marimba, one on vibraphone, and one on the Thai handbell (ching) or a substitute instrument, such as triangle or single high crotale.

8.5×11 PDF score and parts set
$20

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(ASCAP) and © Christopher Adler (ASCAP)