Philip Goddard: Nature-Symphony 52 (The sound of one mountain applauding its climbers)

Nature-Symphony 52 (The sound of one mountain applauding its climbers) - In its really active periods it's only moderately less challenging than Nature-Symphony 51, with a sense of great elation, in its combination and deployment of a musically very potent sextet of metal wind chimes, with ever-evolving, protoplasmic relationship between dissonance and visionary combinations of harmonies. However, the overall sound is mostly more gentle than that of the previous two Nature-Symphonies.
For the benefit of those not already 'in the know', this work's title and the background images here are a humorous reference to the Zen koan (riddle), "What is the sound of one hand clapping?". It is effectively thus a compound koan, doubling the effect of the original - which is highly beneficial provided one doesn't spend extended periods focusing on it. Actually the latter use would be harmful with any such koan or logically impossible riddle, regardless of the fact that certain traditions use them that way and believe such use to be highly beneficial! (that use brings roughly the same problems as regular meditation (see www.clarity-of-being.org/glos... ).
Chimes used:
(layers 1-3 - Note that there's also a Layer 4, but that is simply two short - the second one very short - clips from an earlier bamboo chimes recording, suitably pitch-reduced.)
1+2. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Mezzo and Soprano (6 tubes each, tuned to an Eastern European Gypsy scale)
3. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (5 tubes, moderately high-pitched, tuned to a radiant sunny-sounding pentatonic scale. Not to be confused with the larger and very different-sounding Davis Blanchard Pluto chimes that also figure in some of my Nature-Symphonies)
4. Woodstock Chimes of Polaris (5 tubes, high-pitched, tuned to a radiant pentatonic scale)
5. Woodstock Chimes of Mercury (5 tubes, very high-pitched, tuned to a radiant pentatonic scale)
6. Woodstock Chimes of Mars (5 tubes, very high-pitched, tuned to a scale I can't identify. A very significant feature is its two top notes, a semitone apart. That gives hints of 'major' scale in ensembles)
I made the original recording on 10 December 2013 (freesound.org/people/Philip_G... ), on rough steep ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point on the Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.
Advisory
To get the best out of this, with its mass of detail, listen with high-grade headphones.
________________________________
My Nature-Symphonies are, at least in my experience, a new type of music composition, whose nature and origin has interesting parallels with some of the most inspiring works of Iannis Xenakis through effectively being stochastic (probability-generated) music, and his tendency to create electroacoustic works in which natural sounds and real live instruments are used as a starting-point for transformation in meaningful ways.
Note the hyphenation of 'nature-symphony', because it's important. These are NOT any old type of symphony that is 'about' nature, but are a new type of symphony-type music that is originated and played by 'Mother Nature'. My role as composer, therefore, is as a sufficiently aware and 'deeply connected' enabler, facilitator, and recogniser of what choices have truly 'clicked' and mean something, so that I'm motivated to gather together those inspirational gems and to present them in a meaningful way.
For fuller notes about this type of music work, and the transformations used, see my relevant playlist ( • Philip Goddard: Nature... ).
________________________________
Images used
The location photo shows the recording in progress.
The two background images were generated by Bing Image Creator (an AI service) to my specification, with subsequent outpainting using an online service, as the better alternative to cropping the original square format to the 16:9 aspect ratio. I also added an artist's canvas surface texture.
________________________________
The composition, video and original recording are the Composer's COPYRIGHT, licensed under provisions of *Creative Commons - Attribution*.
The audio is CD quality (16-bit, 44100Hz).