Eunjae Oh: Planck for Piano, Op. 8a (2023)
It's a short piano piece with a very intuitive idea. It took me about two days of actual composing time, after creating 'Multiple Octave Scales' first.
The title comes from the Planck unit, which is a type of natural unit system. There are several types of Planck units, such as the Planck length, which is the smallest measurable and meaningful length in our universe, and the Planck time, which is the time it takes light to travel a "Planck length". If our universe is composed of Planck time units, we can think of it as a discrete space moving at 1.854858×10^43 FPS.
With this in mind, I came up with the idea of creating a work based on the concept of a microcosm, which has a different organization than our universe. Using the idea of Planck time as a guide, I determined the minimum time value for each part, and only used sounds that were multiples of that time value. Since the concept is to create a microcosm, I invented 'Multiple Octave Scales' to apply a unique musical scale. (You can see what Multiple Octave Scales looks like in the picture at the beginning of the video.) The ending of this microcosm was conceived as a big freeze, and the motif is deconstructed and disappear, showing the process of time losing meaning.
The work basically forms an A-B-A'. A is the motif from Manoury's work, and B uses a faster minimum note, which is an application of the relativity of time, meaning that time can be observed as passing faster or slower for different objects due to gravity or speed.
As Op. 8a, the piece is not set in one form; it's not long enough for the ideas it has, so it may one day be reborn as a longer, more substantial piece.
(c) 2023 Eunjae Oh, All rights reserved.