Update Title: 255D36A9-2CC5-4D56-AFC7-3EDF04F1FFF2

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Common Tone is a piece written very much for Martha Mooke - it consists of recorded material and live electric viola, and every bit of it is pure Martha.

The recorded material is her speaking, singing, plucking, and playing: all sounds have been processed in Protools. For me, this is truly a new kind of work. In this piece, I have attempted to combine my experience in scoring, both in terms of recording and creating music for dramatic purposes, and my experience as a concert composer. The resultant work is indeed a filibuster - a barrage of music and words, sometimes violent, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes banal.

What I have tried to create is a type of theater piece. The recorded material consists of Martha reading news stories of recent senate filibusters, as well as recounting Strom Thurmond's famous record holding 1957 filibuster, when during his over 24 hour speech, he read, amongst many other things,  Washington's Farewell Address and The Declaration of Independence. Also quoted in the recorded material is Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More," as well as a Kreutzer etude, a viola study piece akin to Hanon for piano, which is, in my mind, the musical equivalent to the reading of a phonebook, a common ploy during a filibuster.

Martha's live role in this performance is as the common tone (hence the title.) Her fundamental role is to comment upon, and ultimately unite the recorded material. Her fundamental pitch center is "c"  - a common tone by definition, but also the common tone between the keys of the Foster song and the Kreutzer etude. Using "c"  and other devices, mostly
accompanimental, she unifies the recorded material, serving as a protagonist to its antagonistic role. --Laura Karpman

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