Faces
(1989) for percussion and computer-generated sound
Faces was written for Randall Eyles, who gave the premiere performance of the piece at the University of Maryland Computer Music Festival on March 8, 1989. The electronic score was realized at the University of Maryland Computer Music Studio on the Fairlight Series III Computer Musical Instrument. The title of the work is from a story of the same name by Yasunari Kawabata. In his “palm-of-the-hand” story, which is one and a half pages long, a child actress confronts the world outside herself for the first time when her child is born:
Her daughter's face was the first she could not understand. You might say
that her life as a child-actress was ruined when she gave birth to this girl, for
then she realized that there was a great moat between the stage at the theater,
where she cried and made the audience cry, and the world of reality. When
she looked into that moat, she saw that it was pitch-black. Countless
incomprehensible faces like that of her own child, appeared in the darkness.
Yasunari Kawabata
Palm–of–the–Hand Stories
—Robert Gibson
duration: ca. 8:30