THE EVOLUTION OF FORM IN THE MUSIC OF ROGER REYNOLDS (II)

Abstract

This essay analyses the temporal structure of Roger Reynolds's The Palace (Voicespace IV) for baritone and four-channel computer generated sound (1978). Since 1970, Roger Reynolds has used logarithmically expanding and contracting proportions to define sectional durations in his music to the near-exclusion of other designs. Though this general practice is common to many of the composer‘s works, these proportions are employed in this one's formal structure in an idiosyncratic way that is truly unique to the piece. Using sketches from the composer's Library of Congress archive, the analysis demonstrates that the composer's selection of numerical data used to determine sectional boundaries in The Palace is intimately tied the work's conceptual impetus, Jorge Luis Borges's poem of the same title. Reynolds's formal design also reflects larger trends in Borges's writings, notably his short stories.