In the last few years, US composer Kenneth Kirschner has been exploring very large-scale compositional structures – three pieces since 2023 have had durations of over 3 hours – so i thought it would be nicely contrary to feature one of his shorter pieces, June 23, 2013, which has a far more manageable duration of 8 minutes 38 seconds.
It effectively operates as a behavioural stasis undergoing continual changes of appearance, like shape-shifting but where the basic nature of the shape remains the same, and more-or-less recognisable. This consists of a short loop of bouncy material – a tiny melodic idea – that Kirschner immediately sets to work pulling around for all he’s worth.
From the start it already sounds filtered, its frequencies attenuated, the details half-lost in crusted digitalia, and that soon develops into a hard-edged patina, the exterior a spasmodic percussive mass. Pulses burst in the bass, upper harmonics appear and start dancing erratically at altitude, while the central melodic kernel undergoes timbral alterations, though never deviating from its fixed, basic loop.
By three minutes in it’s become a hugely energetic, practically frenzied sound object, after which the shifting becomes more pitch-focused than percussive. Having worked on the outside, Kirschner seems to switch attention to the interior, tweaking and reshaping the timbral and registral makeup of the core material. At times we lose sight of it – particularly when the upper notes become really frenetic – but even here we still recogise it, as much by implication (and familiarity) than anything else.
Almost six minutes in, and the piece starts to become rather mind- (and ear-)boggling in the way it continues to reform, a wild kaleidoscope of pattern and colour. Polarising to the outer regions of register, the core now relocates to the bass, only to leap up into the treble moments after. In the closing 90 seconds everything begins to disintegrate, though never slowing, until we glimpse ever more strongly what might just be the unprocessed original music – soft, delicate, decidedly unenergetic plinking chimes – finally becoming audible through the dying vestiges of hyperactivity.
This is one of Kirschner’s most compelling small-scale works, a perfectly executed, exhilarating demonstration of radical evolution playing out in the midst of something essentially unchanging. Kirschner evidently completed it quickly; begun on June 23, 2013 (Kirscher’s titles always indicate when work started) it was released the following month. As with all his output, it’s available as a free download from Kirschner’s website.
