Notions of Measure

Listen to the work here!
 
Notions of Measure is a trio for three percussionists, each with a small set-up of various non-pitched instruments, in three connected movements. The instrumentation and notation for the work is as follows:
 
Percussion 1: Conga, Bongos, Clave, Splash Cymbal
Percussion 2: Tom-Tom, 3 Woodblocks, Anvil
Percussion 3: Tambourine, 2 Wood Planks, 2 Triangles (1 Muted)
 
This work is inspired by measure theory, a branch of set theory that is primarily concerned with measuring the sizes of infinitely large sets – it may help to think of the adage: “Some infinities are bigger than others”. Each movement is a different metric:
I. Lebesgue Measure is a metric which attempts to preserve the notion of intervals on the real number line – the set [0, 1] should measure 1, as an example.
II. First and Second Category is a way to delineate sets that are small enough to be broken down in a certain way, also called “meagerness”, and those that aren’t.
III. Hausdorff Dimension is a useful metric for sets whose structure is fractal in
nature, and very loosely corresponds to the “spikiness” of the fractal.
Rather than composition via mathematical or algorithmic process, the three metrics here are assembled into an imaginative character suite for three percussionists.