Mynah Games

Mynah Games: mind games, word games, minor games, bird games. An Oulipian aviary of small musical vignettes and pastimes played by birds who think they can speak, whistle backwards, and read upside down. This is music imagined from the minds of birds solving crossword puzzles and reading Calvino. Birds will be nerds.

The piece comprises seven movements arranged in a palindromic arch:

coil is a quasi-blues exploring the percussive possibilities of the alto flute alongside the bass clarinet’s low register, from which a blues-tinged line gradually and painfully rises into its fragile upper range.
scale unfolds as an ostinato built from the full chromatic aggregate, passed between the two instruments with varying regularity, while a haunting shared melody comes to the surface.
call is a strict canon, first at the fourth, then at the third.
space, the central and slowest movement, is in two parts: an opening melody returns at the end in retrograde, while the middle section presents chords arranged in a palindromic structure.
recall offers a freer, retrograde transformation of call.
echo is a strict canon at the unison, followed by its retrograde.
uncoil concludes the work as a compressed retrograde of coil, recalling its quasi-blues incipit in condensed form.consists of seven movements organized in a palindromic arch.

Mynah Games was written in September 2007 on a commission from Lost Dog New Music Ensemble with funds from the American Music Center.

Christine Perea, alto flute; Tom Piercy, clarinet