Here are some of the conclusions I have reached. Note: they are open to change without prior notice.

Composing music is the expression of freedom. Freedom is the ability to make a choice in the face of the random. When I began to compose music, I found it very difficult to make what I felt were "real choices".

I thought somehow that the job of the composer was to find pre-existent sonic realities. I realize now that I was, in a certain way correct but at the time I did not have the technique, the knowledge, to realize my ideas.

I recall sitting at the piano and playing the note D4. I played it repeatedly wondering where it should go "logically". This was a sort of existential question that weighed upon my mind for years.

The solution to this question is to a large degree the meaning of what I have done musically. Composing is also a form of non-verbal Philosophy. Like written Philosophy which recombines words to form concepts to provide a perspective on existence, music recombines tones to the same end. Musical ideas are expressed emotionally through the shifts in material. A composer creates a musical moment, structures it, and then contrasts it with the next musical moment.

This shift takes place repeatedly throughout a work of music. At the end of a piece of music an Image arrives. I will illustrate this idea. Think of a sculpture. We stand before a sculpture and it is a solid unchanging object. It is we who bring time to it. In music, the situation is reversed. The music brings time to us, it unfolds in time before us. And at the end of a piece of music an Image, a Whole, appears in our minds: it is the accumulation of the consecutive events in the piece. The creation of this Image, this Whole, is the Philosophical essence of music.

Composing is a form of Alchemy. Alchemy deals with taking base elements and combining them to produce something greater that the parts. I believe every artist wishes to use his art to alter reality, of course this means to alter the perceptions of those who hear but also the artist seeks the magical combination which will alter all reality. It is something like a magic formula, an "abracadabra" which once said changes the Universe. This may seem unreasonable, but that does not make it untrue.

Finally, composing is Life. Each person must choose a path by which he navigates existence. It is a way to approach being. Composing music is a perspective. It is what Walt Whitman called "The me, myself". It is the center to which the composer returns to in the midst of a world which may at times seem mad; a world which wishes to, for example, muzzle us, to lock us up, to control our physical and mental freedoms, to limit our range of choice. Composing is all of this and endlessly more - for composing, as history has shown, is whatever we choose to make of it in the expression of our individual intellectual freedom.

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Discography

Discographie de Dick Turner

The scales used are the so-called synthetic scales cataloged by Messiaen. These scales are composed of alternating M2 and m2 seconds. These scales have interesting properties. The key to them is that they have no fixed identity. This means a composer is free to approach them by any number of different optics.

I will illustrate a few of the aspects of what I call their Variable Identities.

First, they are symmetrical, the implications of this are important. They have no beginning, nor do they have an end. That is, any note in the scale may serve as the start, any note may serve as the end of the scale.

Next, they can be seen through the optic of any of the intervals. This means that the chords which can be constructed using these scales may or may not have relations to traditional tonal chords but that the progressions between these chords have another logic to them. Thus, the materials of Desperate Measures and the ballet BLOW-OUT! are identical but with completely different results.

The point is: These scales can sound like whatever you want them to sound. They are a sort of image of freedom.

The next important aspect of the music proposed is the constant shift between musical ideas, musical realities, but within a familiar context. The musical ideas presented in these pieces do not try to sound innovative whatsoever, on the contrary they are specifically composed to have a familiar sound to them. It is exactly this familiarity which the composer uses to communicate with the listener.

The ensembles for which these pieces were written are also, with the exception of Parenthèse (solo piano) and The Vigil of Venus (voice, piano, flute), atypical. They purposely combine instruments commonly associated with rock, jazz, and classical music. This was a conscious decision done in accordance with the variable aspect of the scales, chords, and the material in general. Thus, the violoncello is found next to the electric guitar which is found next to the alto saxophone. Yet the composer has worked to give these atypical ensembles their own reality.

The vision herein exposed is again one of Variation, of variable identities, of choice and freedom. This music mixes the known with the unknown, the familiar with the unfamiliar. This concept of variable Identity runs throughout the entire disc. It is, for the composer, the key to freedom, that is working with the situation at hand but having the choice to change one's perspective when the situation changes.

	https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist
	https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfV3Qmocipiu6JeUOJ-fnzXB4d_QK08Lo