Meditatio Synzygiae by Mike McFerron

Meditatio Synzygia is a concert meditation that peers through the intersections where science and art meet. From the ancient Greek, “suzugos” meaning “yoked together”, syzygy has been referred to as a “union of opposites.” In this fixed media electroacoustic composition, the similarities that bind seemingly opposite elements are examined; consonance and dissonance, drone and chime, sound and image, human intuition and algorithmic process, temporal time and musical time, physical and spiritual.

Abandoning a Western traditional 12-step division of the octave, Meditatio Synzygia divides the octave into 672 equal steps. In this composition, the audience hears each of these steps within the octave, and each chime progressively and systematically appears sooner than the previous chime, creating a telescoped dramatic musical shape. At the heart of this microtonal work is a transmogrifying drone, a textural pantina surface on which 672 distinct chimes blot.