| Sinthome is a composition for two pianists and two percussionists. It is the result of a pre-compositional process designed to confront and assuage an anxiety about excessive musical borrowing. This process loosely adopts a psychotherapeutic method for treating phobias known as desensitization therapy. The purpose for this is to immerse myself in, and heavily borrow from, Bela Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, thereby exacerbating the anxiety and intensifying the necessity to deviate from it.;Bartok's work serves as the source and reference point for all materials in Sinthome. Most prominent is the simulation of spoken text taken from his brief essay, About the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Elsewhere, recycled materials intentionally distort or exaggerate their sources, while others allude to previous distortions and detritus from earlier compositional sketches. The outcome of progressively increasing deviations from the source material is the eventual abandonment of the Sonata altogether. |
