Year of Composition: 2011 November
Instrumentation: Flute, Violin, Vibraphone, Harp, and Piano
Duration: ca. 8 minutes
Program Note:
“Ice Crackle Glaze” is a crazing technique used in ceramics to create a decorative crackling effect on the surface of a piece. The technique relies on the fact that heating and cooling of the clay body of the ceramic causes it to expand while the piece’s glazing does not. This expansion causes the glaze to crack and produce “crackle patterns” shaped like snowflakes, fish scales, or various hexagonal patterns horizontally along the surface.
My work attempts to gesture toward this process of rendering patterns of “cracks” by employing a series of expanding or contracting “crashes.” While the crash is a vertical event of the sonority, the cracks try to extend the life of such sonority. The piece represents the corresponding emotional conditions as a mixture of wonderment, meditation, and trembling, thus rendering diverse feelings throughout each section of the work.
Yuan-Chen Li ‧ 李元貞 