!: ,/=”.

for bassoon and violin
Performed by Rebekah Heller and Josh Modney
May 23, 2021, New York, NY (Walden School Alumni Composers Forum)

!: ,/=". is an exploration of the various ways different punctuation marks are parsed in writing, mathematics, and programming, as well as how disparate parts can shift in and out of alignment with each other. The piece opens with !, which is conversationally used to indicate an exclamation but also can be used to show a factorial. The colon and space separate the opening material from the items of the list-like section afterwards (one of the many uses of commas). Various interpretations of '/' come in, as the lists are stopped and started (the use of '/' to end a section in some programming languages), divide note lengths, and alternate between the list and sections of unison (=). The players gradually shift from trying to equal each other to trying to imitate and quote each other in increasingly mocking ways, differentiating = and ". Finally, the piece ends abruptly with several full stops (.).