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The twentieth century saw a profusion of new musical instruments. Certainly electricity opened up new worlds of musical sound, playing technique, and composition. But new acoustic instruments abounded as well.
This collection features works for new, modified, or otherwise non-traditional instruments. The broad assortment of instruments used in these pieces can be classified in any number of ways depending on one's angle of interest. Most instruments can be thought of as belonging to several categories.
 Studies for Player Piano No. 1 and 36 (1948-1992) by Conlon Nancarrow
Incidental Music to Corneille's Cinna (1955-1957) by Lou Harrison
A Delicate Road (2000-2001) by John Morton
The tack piano in Lou Harrison's work is essentially an upright piano with tacks in the hammers and, in this case, strings tuned to a tempered scale of Harrison's own invention. The instrument itself and playing technique remain unchanged. Nancarrow's player piano works much like a traditional player piano, but the action and hammers are modified to make them capable of playing the inhumanly fast and dynamic music he writes. John Morton reconfigures and manipulates typical music boxes in his piece, substantially amplifying and transforming their sound.
Primitive (1942) by John Cage
In the Name of the Holocaust (1942) by John Cage
Lapse (1995/2000) by Arnold Dreyblatt
Here the instruments and their sound are so transformed as to become truly new entities -- quite distinct from their parent instruments. Arnold Dreyblatt's cimbalom, for example, was manufactured originally as a children's piano; Dreyblatt had it rebuilt to be played horizontally with handheld hammers (like a hammer dulcimer). His excited strings bass is another such example (see program notes). John Cage's prepared pianos, as he uses them in these pieces, are played traditionally (from the keyboard) but the various devices inserted between and on the strings alter the sound to the point where it is no longer heard as piano.
Megaton for Wm. Burroughs (1963) by Gordon Mumma
Delusion of the Fury [excerpts] (1965-1966) by Harry Partch
These are wholly new instruments which may share similarities with preexisting ones, but are in sound, structure, and performance technique quite unique. The instruments invented by Harry Partch are prime examples in this category.
Slides Peak (1994) by Tom Guralnick
These devices help a performer to play more instruments or notes simultaneously, or to play them faster, louder, with different timbres, etc. They are reminiscent of the familiar "one-man band" setups which allow a single player to (for example) play a harmonica, guitar, and bass drum all at the same time. Tom Guralnick's Mobile Saxophone and Mute Unit enables him to move quickly and freely from one instrument to another to build dense textural sonic constructions live in performance.
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World [excerpts] (1992-1996) by David A. Jaffe
Racing Against Time (2001) by David A. Jaffe
spogo (2000) by interface
At the heart of the works by Jaffe and the interface duo are a variety of human-computer interfaces which allow the physical movements of a performer to shape or nuance electronics or sampled sounds which could never be produced by a human performer or musical instrument. Such material might include the sounds of cars, jet engines, animals, or anything else a composer might choose to record and sample. These gestural devices allow a musician to 'perform' (rather than simply play back) using an infinite range of sounds as material.
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