Snap Music

Notes

The piece is inspired by the English word ’snap’ and its close to 90 meanings when translated into Finnish language – to crack, to click, to bounce, to flash, to slam… The musical material, gestures and characters of the work are evolved from these, right down to the details.

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”And then I just snapped.” In terms of dramaturgy and emotion, the piece follows the psychological concept of ”snapping”, i.e. psychologically loosing control of oneself. A series of events in which gradually accumulated emotions have developed into a chaos of the mind finally culminates in complete loss of control. What happens when the sense of control vanishes and all that remains is dizzy emptiness?

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Although the underlying idea behind the piece is the psychological, long-span process of snapping, there are also episodes based on the idea of ’snaps’ in the sense of musical extracts. These manifest as types of textures made up of short extracts following one another in a flashing manner while creating abrupt musical cuts, reflecting the restless pace of our hyperactive world.