Ryan Harrigan is a graduating Computer Science and Music technology student at Northeastern University. Hailing from Huntington, New York, he has crossed into nearly every group during his growing years, playing trombone since 4th grade and singing in choir since 6th grade. Ryan has also been composing his own music since 2010, beginning with MIDI loops to YouTube videos/simple indie games. Since beginning at Northeastern in 2014, his compositional portfolio has grown to include classical compositions, acousmatic works, and algorithmic pieces. He has also maintained a presence in music performing groups such as the Pep Band, the Choral Society, and the NU Chamber Singers; he became involved with WRBB (Northeastern’s radio station), performed live with local Boston-area musical acts, and even performed guerrilla marketing campaigns for rising musicians in Manhattan. Upon graduating, Ryan hopes to become involved in a computer science-oriented profession within a music-heavy company culture, though his path is still very much wide open.
Acoustic Works
Mariner's Sonata, in B Minor
Fall 2015
Cello (Rafael Popper-Keizer) and Piano (Sarah Bob)
The mighty sea rears its head often in Boston. Visions appear of sailors, both brave ones and naive ones, who take on the risk of dancing with the briny blue. There's no taming it completely; it has a power that is unparalleled on Earth. No one ever said that facing that power head on didn't have appeal, though.
The 'Mariner's Sonata' is a very theatrical piece that moves along through themes of great contrast in intensity. Starting with a confident and stoic exposition, the music later jumps to several different realms between the serene and the apocalyptic. In alignment with Sonata form, the recapitulation brings the listener back to where the mariner started, but with much more unease. This mariner isn't going to take second chances next time; there's no room for cockiness in the middle of an unforgiving ocean.
The 'Mariner's Sonata' was composed by Ryan in Doug Durant's Composition Seminar course at Northeastern in late 2015, though was not performed acoustically until 2020.
Ryan struggled a lot with sense of purpose and identity for quite a while through his middle years at Northeastern, as well as a fear of failure, hitting a head during the Fall 2018 semester. Obsessing over tiny inconsequential things and ignoring the greater things at stake was par for the course during this time, continuing all the way into 2019. Assignments fell through, relationships fell apart, yet there was so much trivial stuff being obsessed over that he had very little energy to care. Luckily, he is now in the process of righting the course and fixing these issues as he concludes his final semester at NU.
'Circling Thoughts' attempts to recreate the feeling of unease and cacophony that can plague even the most simple tasks when you aren't in a good mind frame. There's so much energy being expended on drawing out minute details that the bigger picture is ultimately lost, and by the time an idea seems good enough you're too lethargic to act on it. This piece starts out very driving and dissonant, reaching a chaotic climax halfway through and giving way to an incredibly slow resolving section building on the original theme. Ending with a slightly dissonant chord which would otherwise be major, this piece encapsulates how stressing over failure and avoiding your problems ultimately leads to unresolved tension.
Appropriately, this piece was submitted late.
'Circling Thoughts' was composed by Ryan during his composition lessons with Dan Godfrey in the Fall of 2018. As of 2020, it has yet to be performed live.
'L'infinito' is one of the best know poems by Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). Written in 1819, it captures both Leopardi's admiration of natural beauty, and his fixation on mortality and the concept of eternity. Leopardi viewed that joyful experiences, ones that were fueled by admiration, were merely lapses in pain, and only in death, and by extension eternity, can one know of everlasting joy. In this poem, he is attempting to reach eternal peace by embedding himself into nature and losing his thoughts within it. This parallels his own personal belief that he would not live very long (this worry turns out to be valid; he dies at the age of 38)
However, eternity is still a largely unknown and frightening concept. The increasingly frantic nature of this work demonstrates that "never-ending joy" may simply be a comforting notion, not offering any real answers to what happens in eternity. The original poem is cut off early in this composition, leaving the piano fading in a perpetually diminishing cycle suggesting that eternity, as we know it, is never to actually be reached.
'L'infinito' was composed by Ryan in Doug Durant's Composition Seminar course at Northeastern in the Fall of 2015, and was first performed at the Fenway Center that same semester.
Fixed Media Works
12/25/2012
Fall 2018 - Spring 2020
This piece is named after the first Christmas day after Ryan's grandfather had passed away. "12/25/2012" is a fixed piece which samples a reading of Ryan's grandfather's eulogy written by his great aunt. The piece was an incredibly emotionally taxing piece to write, and one that was put off multiple times.
The composition relies on the context that Ryan's grandfather was an avid Christmas fanatic, and would "delight in telling you the exact number of days until Christmas". His grandfather died in January 2012, so there was still the vast majority of the year to live through before the first Christmas without him. The goal of this piece is to encapsulate the heavy emotional thoughts that come with remembering the quirks and perks of a loved one who passed away as the first year marches on. There is an inherent attempt at grounding every time it is mentioned how many days there are until Christmas, but as the year marches closer and closer to Christmas the memories all begin to seem cacophonous; that is until Christmas day comes and the atmosphere becomes solemnly wistful.
"12/25/2012" was composed by Ryan in Mike Frengel's Composition for Electronic Instruments class beginning in the Fall of 2018, though adjustments were made to the piece through Spring of 2020.
This piece is dedicated to Ernest T. Jorgensen (March 27, 1944 - January 12, 2012).
Imminence
Spring 2015
"Imminence" is an acousmatic work that exploits the qualities of different types of resonances in order to create a feeling of uncertainty of environment; the intent for the first few minutes of the piece is fo the listener to not have the chance to assign an environmental space by having the resonances be deliberately contrasting. As the source of each type of resonance becomes less and less obvious as the piece continues, it becomes more difficult for any environment to be assigned, even momentarily, ultimately leading to an underlying building of tension which explodes and resolves when the space returns to the beginning.