Temruukum

Instrumentation: two ocarinas, two jalatharangams (sets of pitched porcelain bowls fine-tuned with water), two ghatams (South Indian clay jug drums)

Duration: variable; approx. 10-15 min.

Recording: click here
Sara Ricer and Jeannie Psomas, ocarinas
Sean Connors and Annie Stevens, jalatharangams
Rohan Krishnamurthy and John Driscoll, ghatams

Program note:

Temruukum was commissoned by the Warren Benson Forum on Creativity in 2010 for a concert celebrating the theme of “diversity in musical influence.” In approaching the commission, I viewed this theme not as a challenge to compose a piece which exhibits diversity when compared to the works of my peers, but as a challenge to incorporate many diverse compositional techniques and styles into a single work. Throughout my career so far, I have had the opportunity to study some of the musical traditions of Bali, Java, North India, and Zimbabwe in the United States, India, and Indonesia, and Temruukum draws upon many of the musical concepts I learned through these experiences as well as the diverse musical influences provided by the varying backgrounds of the six individual performers for whom the work was written. In honor of the superb creativity and musicality of these six musicians as well as the aesthetic importance of improvisation in several of the musical traditions mentioned above, the piece features a great deal of improvisation and decision-making on the part of the performers; the notation I provided them with is only a template from which many pieces of a similar nature may be realized.

Temruukum is scored for three pairs of instruments, all made out of clay, and the title is a combination of the words tembikar, ruumbo, and kumhari, which mean “pottery” in Bahasa Indonesia, Shona, and Hindi, respectively. The jalatharangam, a set of pitched porcelain bowls fine-tuned with water, and the ghatam, a clay jug drum, are both native to India, while the ocarina, an oval-shaped wind instrument, has a more widespread history; different versions of the instrument were popular in both China and several Mesoamerican cultures. Like the musical material of the piece, the tuning systems used in Temruukum derive inspiration from a number of sources, including a particular Zimbabwean mbira owned by Glenn West, the Balinese gamelan semaradana, and the theoretical idea of non-octave based equal temperaments which at times approximate extended just intonation.