UC San Diego

In this thesis, I work to develop an approach for performers to navigate the complexity of Aaron Cassidy’s The Crutch of Memory in a way which upholds Cassidy’s rhythmic ideology. Beginning by exploring “Imagining a Non-Geometrical Rhythm,” a lecture in which Cassidy thoroughly outlines how his work attempts throughout his career to subvert the basis of Western notation on rhythm which utilizes rational proportions to create pulse and grouping, I define what his rhythmic ideology is. From here, I use a method he presents in the lecture to create a visual representation of how a listener perceives measures 1 and 11 of the piece, showing that the hypercomplexity of the aural result often transcends that which a practitioner of Western music can understand or execute by way of standard notation. With this established, I propose ideas for how a performer may approach learning the work in a way that acknowledges the complexity but upholds that ideology for which Cassidy strives. Concluding, I find the score, even with its hypercomplexity, to be an accurate tablature of how a performer may internally conceive the work such that even with compromises to the notated rhythms they may still produce that aural result that subverts the standards of Western rhythm.