Pyroclastic Steam

Dave Hall

General Info

Year of Published: 2012
Publisher: C. Alan Publications
Difficulty: Intermediate
Duration: 00:07:30
Cost: $50.00

Instrumentation

Player 1: Crotales & Tam-Tam
Player 2: Glockenspiel & Xylophone
Player 3: Vibraphone 1 & Snare Drum
Player 4: Vibraphone 2 & Snare Drum
Player 5: Marimba 1 (4-octave) & Very Small Triangle & Garden Weasel
Player 6: Marimba 2 (4.5-octave) & Medium Triangle & Nutshell Shaker
Player 7: Marimba 3 (5-octave) & Large Triangle & Suspended Cymbal
Player 8: Marimba 4 (5-octave) & Very Large Triangle & China Cymbal
Player 9: Timpani & Bird Whistle
Player 10: Chimes & Ocean Drum & Lion's Roar & Tam-Tam
Player 11: Marching Bass Drum & Concert Bass Drum & Finger Cymbals & Rainstick & Ribbon Crasher & Bird Call
Player 12: Tam-Tam & Suspended Cymbal & Log Drum (4 pitches) & Snare Drum
Player 13: China Cymbal & Sizzle Cymbal & Suspended Cymbal & Echo Chimes & 4 Concert Tom-toms & Shekere & Rainstick

Description

Pyroclastic Steam was inspired by a 2012 trip to teach percussion at Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu, Hawaii. The beauty of the islands along with their seemingly improbable and precarious location in the middle of the Pacific sparked my interest in the volcanic origin of the islands, and in volcanoes in general. The piece is composed of four parts: Eruption, Aftermath, Synthesis, and Epilogue. In the first three sections, the music depicts the violent process of the islands’ formation from molten lava to rock. The ensemble represents the different physical states of matter, moving from liquid to gas to solid.

While the first three parts are set in the distant past before anyone inhabited the islands, the Epilogue is set in present day, and is based on a very specific memory I have of my time there. Before each meal the students would gather to sing the doxology in Hawaiian outside of their cafeteria (which happened to be perched on top of a mountain). As I looked out at the island and listened to the austere beauty of their music, it seemed that our surroundings (the ocean, trees, and some nearby birds) were singing along with them. Standing on rock that was once fire, I was struck by the beauty of the present moment, all made possible by some of the most violent forces of nature imaginable.

Pyroclastic Steam was commissioned by Russell Ratterree and the Wylie Percussion Ensemble for their showcase concert at the 2012 Percussive Arts Society International Convention.

Works for Percussion by this Composer

Amorphous Solid
Apocalyptic Etude
Archipelagos
Ascends the Sky
Disarchitecture
Doors
Escape Velocity
Innerludes
Liminality - Percussion 12
Pyroclastic Steam
Skylight
Slide
Surfacing
The Persistence of Memory
Tilted Spheres