Octuor en Binaire

Listen to the work here!
 
Octuor en Binaire, which translates from French as “octet in binary”, is a work for eight musicians, with the only requirement being that they can create sustained tones of indefinite length. In many cases, this requirement may lend itself to string players or percussionists utilizing rolled technique on keyboard instruments, although the work may be performed by wind instrumentalists or vocalists sufficient in circular breathing, or a combination of the above. The music is a process composition inspired by the mathematical construction known as Pascal’s Triangle, and specifically the fact that the numbers in each row of Pascal’s Triangle sum to successive powers of 2. Because the partial sum of the series of powers of 2 creates a number one less than a power of 2, the rows of Pascal’s triangle are used here to create a rhythmic grid system for 8 players to fill in 32 measures (or 256 = 2^8 = a “binary octet” of eighth notes). The melody performed by each player is taken from an 1879 orchestral work by Camille Saint-Saëns, who shares French nationality with the mathematician Blaise Pascal, and wrote the melody 256 years after Blaise Pascal’s birth in 1623. Each musician plays the melody a perfect fourth away from their neighbors.