Timothy McCormack

...stretched across its axes is a solo for viola by Timothy McCormack, written in 2024 and recorded here by Marco Fusi, the player it was made with. It lasts a little under 45 minutes and is one continuous piece. The two had talked about it for well over a decade, since McCormack's time at Harvard, and the material was finally fixed during a concentrated workshop in New York.

The sound is magnified rather than loud. Writing in the Neue Musikzeitung, Rainer Nonnenmann described the bow drawn so slowly across the strings that the continuous tone falls apart into single pulses: the hair grips the string, drags it a fraction, lets it snap back. Which string, where the bow touches, how hard and how fast all change the overtones that this rattling sets off in the body of the instrument.

McCormack has said he cannot use a sound until he knows exactly how it is made. With Fusi he tested each one for bow speed, bow position, finger pressure and bow pressure. The parameter that can be varied without breaking the sound becomes the one that shapes it. His own note treats the viola as a body of tendons and ligaments, where pressing in one place creates tension in another. He calls the result "a hidden, withdrawn counterpoint of tactility and sensation."

One discovery from the sessions is placed about thirty minutes in: heavy bow pressure combined with fingering up the string gives a low growl and a high partial at the same time. Months after finding it, McCormack came back with a quotation from Stravinsky played in that technique. Another Timbre previously released his hour-long piano piece mine but for its sublimation, played by Jack Yarbrough.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Sam Dunscombe. Cover artwork, Forms of Co-existence, by Sebastien Robinson.