Comparison of Gutierrez’s Twittering Machine with Tymoczko’s Twittering Machine

Comparison of Gutierrez’s Twittering Machine with Tymoczko’s Twittering Machine

Gutierrez’s piece of twitter Machine was played by flute (maybe piccolo) and piano. It is a rather unpredictable piece due to its sudden changes of pitch and tempo with the long pulses that appears at the end of the music. In the beginning of the piece, there were three sudden fiddling sound of piano attacking with quick and low-pitched notes while the flute vibrating in a higher pitch. This gives the feeling of something struggling in a moment of sudden, like the birds that were being tied onto machine.

There were great contrasts between the timbers of the two instruments. Piano in this piece mostly used low-pitch and heavy notes, which creates a dark metallic feeling, like imprisonment, which couldn’t stop me thinking of the dark-handled machine that ties and twists the birds around. In contrast, the timbers of the high-pitch flute and piccolo are bright and penetrating, just like the chirpings of the birds, especially when they’re being tied up to this machine and sometimes their chirpings becomes high-pitch shirking. Some toning had been intentionally muffled to create the effect of the birds. Thus although the “machine” of the piano is used mostly as an accompany for the “singing” of the flute, the contrast between the timber makes them both stand out as two distinct objects in this “image”.

Comparing with Gutierrez’s Twittering Machine, Tymoczko’s piece of Twitter Machine reveals significant differences. Begins with a very rhythmic melody played by the viola, followed by equally rhythmic cello and violin, the rhythm of this piece forms a strong contrast with Gutierrez’s piece of irregular tempo right in the beginning. While there is not so much contrast as the Gutierrez’s keyboard and woodwind has, Tymoczko’s string quartet only have the contrast between the pitches of violin and cello. But unlike Gutierrez’s Twittering Machine where everything seems to be coming from everywhere and chaotic, in Tymoczko’s piece there were constant imitation and sequencing.

Despite the differences between timber and rhythms, the two pieces actually have a lot of similarities between the melody and dynamics. For example, they both have places of sudden changes of volume and mood. In Gutierrez’s piece, entering the second minute, the melody played by the flute starts to move by leaps instead of