- Ming Tsao
The Book of Virtual Transcriptions (2004)
(for ensemble)- Henry Litolff’s Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (World)
Programme Note
The Book of Virtual Transcriptions is a 15–minute work where unusual conceptual models derived from architect Daniel Liebeskind’s Virtual House beget novelty of form and an incongruity of acoustic properties (as well as their associated meanings) from traditional instruments, the latter often resulting in resemblances to other instruments that are not present. The brittle logic of this work transcribed into a series of 49 sounding structures offers a way out of the conventional narrative, deconstructing and reconstructing contexts that then resist assimilation into readily understood continuities. What is significant is that the riddle of “what is it?” has a sustained and inquisitive tension, dimensionality and logic in retrospect: that which constitutes the rightness of the fragmented wholeness itself.