8. Hibernaculum - Cameron Gwynn, with Brittney Pflanz

[Brittney] Hello and welcome to the Theorist Composer Collaboration, a podcast interview series highlighting modern composers and their compositions hosted by music theorists. My name is Brittany Pflanz, and I'm a current graduate music theory student at Florida State University and I'll be your host for today. The music that you were just listening to is an excerpt from the piece Hibernaculum by Cameron Gwynn, who alongside his music, is a featured guest on this episode. That leads me to welcome Cameron to the program. How are you doing?

[Cameron] I'm doing great Brittany, how are you?

[Brittney] I'm doing alright. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, either professionally or personally, whatever you choose.

[Cameron] Sure. Yeah, my name is Cameron. I am a master's student in music theory at Florida State University. I did my undergrad at the University of Georgia and my master's in composition at the University of Miami. So, yeah.

[Brittney] How would you describe yourself as a composer?

[Cameron] As a composer, I would say that I am more tonally minded than a lot of contemporary composers seem to be, or at least have seemed to be in my experience. I know UGA especially was a much more avant-garde program and Miami was a little more of a mixed bag, I think. But in general, I do like to write tonal music that's more late-romantic inspired. I take after my favorite composer Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev as well. And more recently, I've been very excited by the style of Richard Strauss and I like to try to imitate that late-romantic German sound in my own music.

[Brittney] Interesting that you say that because, knowing you as a colleague, I know you've also been into some quarter tonal compositions yourself. So do you want to speak about that a little bit?

[Cameron] Sure. I mean, quarter tonality is, at least as a theorist, it's very interesting to me. And then also as a composer it is because it's just, it's such a different sound world. And I say world because it's really a system, right? It's not one single sound that is new. It's a system that my ears aren't familiar with and a lot of modern Western listeners aren't used to that sound. So it's just interesting to me. And my work with quarter tonality is really an attempt to make those sounds more approachable. I think I occupy an interesting space being so traditional in my preferences for tonality, but then still being interested in quarter tonality. I think it gives me an interesting place to try to reconcile the two.

[Brittney] Nice. And I know you just mentioned you're a theorist and we'll talk about this a little bit later as well. But how much do you think does music theory impact your own compositional process?

[Cameron] Oh, it impacts it a lot. One of the biggest struggles for me actually has been moving away from just writing stuff based on tonal music theory. I've gotten the criticism before from professors that my music sometimes sounds like a theorist wrote it, which is a devastating blow to the morale. Not really, but it is something that I try to avoid, because it's very easy as a theorist to just grab from my bag of tricks that I already know works because it's been done a bunch of times and analyzed a bunch of times and it's comfortable to me. So there are times when I try to move away from that. And the piece we're talking about today, the one you heard, is really one of those pieces where I just try to make decisions based on what I wanted to hear and try to purposely abstract myself away from what was tonally functional. And the result is not a piece that's altogether that strange sounding, which is fine by me.

[Brittney] But you'd still say it leans more towards tonal than some of your other pieces?

[Cameron] Yeah, I mean, I don't really have any... well, I guess I have a couple properly atonal pieces, but I mean, this one is very much in a triadic world that's very, I guess not the most centric, but it is very comfortable to tonal ears, even if it doesn't have the same tonal function all over the place. There are definitely moments of tonal function, though.

[Brittney] Interesting. And before we get more into the actual piece itself, can you speak a little bit on the title of it, Hibernaculum? That's interesting. What does it mean and how does it play into the piece a little bit?

[Cameron] Yeah, so a hibernaculum is a crazy word that I came across one day. I think it was the dictionary.com word of the day. Don't quote me on that, but I think that that's where I first heard it. And I was like, what a neat little word. And it means the place where an animal hibernates. So like a cave or a burrow or wherever an animal chooses to hibernate, that's called the hibernaculum. So it's not, I like the word because it's not one that I think a lot of people know, but it is one that once you hear the definition, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I just didn't need a word for that, but there it is. It makes sense. It has the same first several letters. So in terms of how that manifested in the piece, I really had images of, I don't know if you've seen any Winnie the Pooh. Did you? 

[Brittney] Oh, gosh. Not for a couple of years, I think. It's been a long time.

[Cameron] It's been a while. Yeah. Well, there's this one episode or this one story. It's called like A Very Blustery Day or something. And there's this crazy wind happening the whole time. And I just, I don't know, I really like the aesthetic of that wind just blowing and blowing and constantly blowing. And I wanted something like that because it still somehow felt comforting. Like the thought of being inside your hibernaculum while there's all this wind or winter, whatever happening outside. I don't know, there's this juxtaposition of harsh environment and cold environment and wind versus being in your cozy little burrow that I really wanted to tackle with this piece. And so you heard all the movement of the faster stuff that was happening and then slower melodic lines happening above that or below it, however you want to look at it.

[Brittney] Interesting. Going back to the wind, as a percussionist, the wind machine is not used very often. And I noticed that that was in the score. It wasn't super audible in the recording, but it's definitely an interesting choice. What was your thought process behind including that? Was it really that wind that you heard in that Winnie the Pooh episode that you wanted to emulate there?

[Cameron] That was all Winnie the Pooh, yeah. You know, I mean that episode has the wind sound and we have an instrument to emulate that sound, the wind machine. So I was like, why not throw it in? And the part is so easy to play. Like if you can roll a wheel and read dynamics, I think you could play the wind machine part for this piece. The issue, however, as I'm sure you're well aware as a percussionist, is that not a lot of people have a wind machine. At least not a full-sized wind machine, because they do make smaller ones that sound less like actual wind, but the larger ones do sound more like wind. So I wanted that sound to exist for people who have that, but I also have an alternate version of the score with no wind machine. And the recording that you listened to was one of those performances without the wind machine.

[Brittney] And that performance was by who and has it been performed elsewhere?

[Cameron] Yeah, so that performance was by a group that I put together just to perform that piece. So it was an SCI concert at the University of Miami. And I just, I put the group together just because I wanted to have a performance of this piece. I thought it wasn't, you know, it's not terribly long. It's not too intimidating once you get past the time signature, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And I thought it could be a good piece to really get a good recording of, so I put together a group and we performed it, or they performed it for that concert. And this is a little tangent, but I actually had a conductor for that piece and I usually don't have a conductor. Or at least if I write for a larger ensemble, you know, it's kind of shuffled into whatever the concert already was and the conductor won't spend much time on it. But for this piece, my conductor was actually super helpful and, you know, he took the score home and looked over it and analyzed it and then he came back and would ask questions about it and be like, I noticed you did this and I noticed you did this. He's like, what about this and why does it work this way? And I was like, oh, I didn't realize it did that. And so I think at a certain point he knew the piece better than I did. It was really cool to work with someone who was that invested in my music. So the end result was that the rehearsals went really well, you know, and he did a great job rehearsing them. And I basically didn't even have to be there. I mean, he was running the rehearsal so efficiently. And because it's a short piece and it was the only one they were playing, I think we had two rehearsals on it and a dress rehearsal, which is plenty for that piece. The performance went really, really well and I was very happy with the recording.

[Brittney] Interesting. I'd like to back up just a little bit. I know you mentioned the interesting time signature that you wrote this piece in. It's 12/16 plus 15/16. And can you speak a little bit on the significance of that time signature to you?

[Cameron] Yeah, that time signature has been the cause of many sleepless nights. I'm sorry I brought it into the world. It really was the lesser of several evils that I could have picked. And if anyone out there listening can think of a better way to write this, please let me know because I'm still not happy that it exists. It looks it just looks terrible. But truly all it is is a measure of four compound divided beats and then a measure of five compound divided beats. And you're alternating that pattern the entire time. And so the other options that I explored were actually writing out 12/16 one measure and then 15/16 the next measure and having a time change every single measure, which is awful. Or having the piece be in 27/16, which is also very awful. The other, I think equally bad to what I ended up doing, is to write the 12/16 plus 15/16 as I have but then do dotted bar lines every other bar line so you can at least see where the pattern repeats. That could maybe work. I think that makes counting the multi measure rest a little bit more tricky. So there I could not think of any good way to do this. All the people I asked could not think of a better way. And the reaction while I was working on this, everyone's reaction was always the same, which is why would you write that time signature ever? I was like, help me. And they're like, oh, OK, I guess I guess that's what you have to do. And really, at the end of the day, once you have played with it a little bit, it's not as intimidating as it seems. And so it was able to come together pretty quickly.

[Brittney] I'm glad you went with 12/16 plus 15/16. I think I would freak out if I saw 27/16 on a piece that I had to play. But yeah, that's interesting. And did it hold any significance to you or did you just think it sounded cool and went with the piece?

[Cameron] Well, that's a good question. Why write anything that required that choice? I really just played this riff on piano and I thought it sounded pretty neat. And it was one of those moments, and this happens actually fairly frequently, when I write is I have a riff or a motif or something and I play it on piano. And when I write it out, I realize it's in just a crazy time signature, which is sad. But it happens. And so I wrote this riff out. And to have that top voice, the top voice of each group of three notes move in a scalar pattern, you know, down, up, down, down, up, up, and then up back to the first note, it required nine beats to happen. So hence the four plus five.

[Brittney] And speaking of piano, when I first heard this piece, what really drew my attention was that opening piano motif that recurs a lot. And I was wondering if that was a nod to the title of the piece kind of sounded like something that hibernated before emerging again and again throughout the piece. I know it comes in the piano and the marimba as well. Do you think that you tried to tie it together there or was it just a riff that sounded cool that you think fit the overall aesthetic?

[Cameron] I mean, both. I feel like it fits the aesthetic. It really, it really is supposed to represent the wind from Winnie the Pooh. It's just, you know, it's tumultuous, but it's also not like in a low register and thunderstorm-scary. It's more an inconsequential flurry of wind. And I feel like it captures that well, both on the piano and the marimba. And also, I just really like the slight difference in timbres between marimba and piano in that range. You know, because of the way those instruments are usually written, you have to write so differently for piano and marimba that they, they really do sound like different instruments. But when they're playing the same thing in that register, especially, I feel like the timbre is really similar. And I like exploring that the difference in timbre and that's actually what I do at the very end of the piece is the piano fades out and the marimba fades in and they take over each other's role. And so it's just it's just cool to see the exploration of that timbre.

[Brittney] I also noticed that that happens quite frequently throughout the piece as well. The fading in between the piano and the marimba and trading off parts being in unison. So that was really cool. And speaking of timbre as well, you also had a lot of other moments that you created really unique and interesting timbres. Something that stuck out to me specifically was right around rehearsal letter F, where you had the marimba playing with the pizzicato strings. And can you speak a little bit more to the effect that you were trying to create there?

[Cameron] Yeah, so I'll say about this piece in general is that, unlike a lot of my other music, which is more programmatic and, you know, beginning to end and trying to get through a narrative for this piece. I really wanted to capture a snapshot, you know, of this hibernating space and the environment around it. And the issue for me doing that as someone who doesn't usually do that is I usually rely on narrative to give me a crutch for musical development, and I couldn't do that here so I kind of had to have better economy of material and use similar motifs and change up the instrumentation and one of the ways I decided to do that was with the pizzicato and the marimba, which I think at one point I had the marimba as using dead strokes there, I don't know if that ended up in the performance.

[Brittney] I think it did. I did, I did notice that the staccato marimba was dead strokes, which created that really cool effect along with the pizzicato strings.

[Cameron] Yeah, yeah. So having those together is just like, I don't know, it really is just a cool sound and I liked it. And it doesn't really go much deeper than that. It was just another way to develop what is really a very small amount of musical material for this short piece.

[Brittney] And I know you talked about Winnie the Pooh a little bit. So I think it's interesting that when I first listened to it, it reminded me a lot of film music, which I think is very fitting considering your TV show inspiration. And now before we move on a little bit, I did want to say that this is a very interesting ensemble. This piece was written for flute, B flat clarinet, violin, cello, piano, marimba, and wind machine. So what was it like having, logistically, having this performed?

[Cameron] Yeah, so this is it's a modified Pierrot ensemble, which is flute clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and then oftentimes it'll have percussion. And so adding wind machine means two percussionists or, logistically and realistically, one percussionist and one person who wants to play wind machine. But it is a really nice ensemble and the blending of sounds is great because you do have that string texture, you have the violin and cello, but you also have the woodwind texture. And those instruments usually can play around the same dynamic range, and the recording for some reason, the violin isn't coming through as strong. We all know violin is plenty loud, so I don't think that's an issue with the ensemble. I think it was just a recording thing. But I do think it's a well balanced ensemble. And in terms of the number of textures and the variety of textures you can get from a relatively small group was ideal for me because I typically write for full orchestra because I love having the full palette available of sounds. But it's very impractical to write for full orchestra because then it's very difficult to get performances. So this was a happy medium for me where it was a doable amount of performers to schedule rehearsal to get together, but still has that wide variety of sounds and textures that you can get.

[Brittney] And before we move on, is there anything else in particular that you wanted to discuss about this piece?

[Cameron] One moment that I think is cool and it's tied in pretty similarly to what happens at the end with the marimba and the piano is there's this section at round letter G where the marimba has Es and C sharps, and there's actually different dynamics between the top staff and the bottom staff. And the E starts off strong and diminuendos kind of fades as the C sharp in the left hand is growing and that kind of changes the underlying harmony into, I believe, some kind of dominant chord. And I'm curious as a percussionist, how often do you come across different dynamics between the two hands and marimba? Because I thought it worked really well in this piece and I feel like it's probably something that's been explored a lot.

[Brittney] Oh gosh, I can't think of any pieces that I've personally played that the dynamics were split between two different staves. I think most of what I've encountered is specific lines with accents on them to bring out a specific melodic line or a compound melody. But yeah, that's really interesting. I didn't notice that, but I do see how that could definitely change the sonorities that you're getting out of that.

[Cameron] Yeah, it's definitely something that even I knowing that it's there, I do not catch it unless I'm like fully listening to just that. I like it's pretty cool.

[Brittney] Yeah, it's a really cool effect. And I have one last question before we move on. So I know you talked about the meaning behind the title. And when I listened to this piece, it sounded very springy to me with a lot of those airy textures, the woodwinds and the wooden timbers from the marimba. Can you speak to that a little bit? Was that what you were aiming for? And does it tie in at all with the title?

[Cameron] Yeah, so I was really going for more of like a biting cold that would come with the winter. Not necessarily snowy, but I could see there being snow. So it's interesting that you heard spring. Listening to it again, since you said that, I do get it, though, because I don't know, when you have such bright textures like the string harmonics and the high woodwinds holding notes, you know, I kind of saw that as a more biting, wintery cold, but I could also see that being that bright texture being reminiscent of new life and new beginnings that comes with spring, especially because the wind motif is bouncing around a lot. But, the original goal was to try to capture the sound of winter and coldness.

[Brittney] I think that's particularly interesting considering the juxtaposition of winter and spring that comes with hibernation as well. So yeah, that's very interesting. Did you want to talk about, did you have any of the winter topic in there? Was that something that you thought about? I know the winter topic has been kind of a topic amongst our colleagues for a couple of weeks now.

[Cameron] Yeah, I mean, I had not studied or read about the winter topic at the time that I was writing this, but that's the cool thing about topics theory is that it's trying to capture things that we experience just through listening to a lot of music, a large body of music and existing in culture. And so, like, you know, especially with discussions of film music and media music, depictions of winter will typically have a set of characteristics about the music that composers will employ. And I wasn't, you know, I'm not actually scoring a film, so I wasn't trying to be like, okay, I need a one to one ratio of the characteristics that will truly make this a winter topic. But I definitely was pulling from things that I've heard associated with winter. Again, those high timbres with the harmonics and the high woodwinds, especially to me really, really drove that home.

[Brittney] All right. And now moving on to some of the more loaded questions. What does composition mean to you?

[Cameron] What does composition mean to me? Composition is really just one side of how we as humans experience music, right? There's music that we play, we listen to, we embody, and that music needs to be written at some point. And I think that's a very, I mean, all of it, I think, is a very human expression. And composition is just how I personally like to engage with that. You know, I'll still play music sometimes. And of course, I listen to music a lot. But composition is something that I feel like really, really comes from my desire to understand music that I've had for a while and my desire to engage in it with that way. For example, I remember in sixth grade, our very first piece that we played as a band was from our band workbook. It's mostly scales in the book and stuff and like random miscellaneous melodies that are really short. But then halfway through, you get this full band piece that's super basic. We only knew six notes. But I loved rehearsing that because I got to hear, OK, this is what the clarinets are doing, this is what the trombones are doing, this is what the trumpets are doing, and this is how it all comes together. And like piece by piece, hearing it come together and then hearing how that makes a cohesive piece of music where people are doing different things to make one final product was just absolutely captivating for me. And I remember we had this there was this one part of that piece where the trumpets, I was playing trumpet, the trumpets go, da da da da da da. Right. And we have eighth notes and then quarter notes and we haven't learned sixteenth notes yet but I was like, you know, it'd be even cooler is if we did da dada da da da. But I didn't know what 16th notes were. I just knew that I wanted to hear that. And so I wrote it in the score and I remember looking back years later and I was like, oh, this notation is really not correct at all. But it's interesting that from very early on in my musical development, I connected and resonated so strongly with the construction aspect of music, how it's actually made. And so anyways, a long winded answer to your question. But what composition means to me is it's just the the part of music where you're truly creative. And I think that's that's true, especially for improvisational musicians, whether you're in an ensemble playing aleatoric music or whether you're a jazz improviser, because I do some jazz as well. And that that aspect of creation in the field of music is just so I don't know, it's so exciting to me. And, yeah, that's what it means to me.

[Brittney] Interesting. Good answer. Do you think that listening by ear, like trying to create what you want to hear, is something that drives you a lot when you're composing?

[Cameron] Yes, I would say so, which can sometimes work to my detriment because, if you do that, if you do only that, and this is a problem that a whole lot of young composers face, if you only do that, then your style becomes very stale and it can be easy to fall into a trap of being like, oh, no, I just I have defined my own state style. But for a lot of young composers, you haven't defined your own style  you're you're almost afraid to go out and do something that you're not necessarily hearing on the first listen. And that was something that I struggled with a lot. I still struggle with now. It's very easy to default to things that I'm comfortable writing. And I'm not the kind of person who values novelty and composition for its own sake. Right? I think there's a lot to be said for using things you've heard before in ways that are maybe new and unique, but are ultimately still things you've heard before. But, yeah, in terms of writing based on what I hear and want to hear, I'm a very harmonically minded composer and theorist, I'm very fast at hearing chords and not so fast at memorizing melodies over length of time or hearing developments from point A to point B. In aural skills classes, I've always struggled with form much more than I have with harmony. And for whatever reason, I'm just wired to hear harmony very, very quickly. And so that has driven my composition. I really write harmonically, I think harmonically, my melodies are usually derived harmonically. And so when we talk about writing what I hear, it's not as simple as like, oh, what is the tonal theory dictating that I do? And what is it that I hear in my head that I want to do? Because often those two are one and the same. And so to break free from that, I often have to write things that I don't necessarily want to hear yet. And then as they develop and as I listen to them more and get comfortable with the fact that they're there, usually what happens is I end up liking it a lot more than if I had written something that I was comfortable doing.

[Brittney] And speaking of theory and composition, I know you've spoke to this a little bit throughout the episode, but how do you see these two elements of music working together? And what do you think is optimal in terms of the balance between them?

[Cameron] So I would say that I am, as a theorist, I find myself, if I'm ever butting heads with someone over theory, it seems like a lot of times it's because a lot of the field is focused on analysis. And truly what theory has been for a long time, probably forever, the field has been really focused on just that, you know, taking music that exists and then describing how that music operates. And for me as a composer, I like to use theory more prescriptively, like you see in the 20th century happening. For me personally, if I use theory to guide my composition too much, then it can become stale. And but still as a theorist, I find myself gearing more towards prescriptive theories. So, for example, I briefly mentioned my quarter tonal stuff in the beginning. That is more of a prescriptive theory because the body of work that that would be able to analyze is extremely small, as far as I've found maybe just a couple pieces. But I feel like if you can develop a system to describe a musical syntax, then that doesn't necessarily have to be analytically useful. If it is, you know, if it's geared towards composers who want to use that to write music using that syntax. And so I feel like I've faced some pushback when I tried to make a theory that is for composers and prescriptive rather than an analytical one. But I feel like theory is just, you know, an analysis of music, a description of music and musical processes. And there's no reason that those musical processes can only be described retroactively. I think it's the sort of thing that you can do beforehand to help generate material.

[Brittney] Interesting. And would you mind sharing some of your thoughts on the current landscape of modern composition?

[Cameron] Oh, man. Well, I can share them, but I am very new in the field, relatively. You know, I'm 26 years old as of right now, and there are probably most of the people in the field have been doing this longer than I've been able to talk. So this perspective is coming from someone who's very much new to the field. But the field of composition, I feel like has a lot of interesting stuff going on just in terms of at the university level. There does seem to be wide scale support for composers who want to be very experimental. And the difference from what I understand, the difference now from how that has been in the past is most programs that I know of aren't pushing you to be fully experimental, right? They'll push you to be to leave your comfort zone and to try new things. You know, it's like when you're a kid and your parents tell you to try new food, even though you don't like it and, like, you know, hopefully something sticks and you like that food. It's the same way in universities with composition students, you know, you try to get us to try something different and then hopefully take something away, even if it doesn't fundamentally change who we are as a composer. I think on a large scale, composition at the university level is just very, very open to tonal music and avant-garde music and also increasingly blends with more popular music with jazz, fusion and that sort of stuff. You know that, I mean, Berklee is famous for doing that. I know coming from the Frost School of Music that there's a lot of that going on there. I'm sure there's plenty of other programs around the country that are integrating different types of music and kind of, you know, breaking down these barriers and doing that in new and interesting ways. And so the field of composition, I feel like creatively is healthy. I can't speak about resources and funding and stuff like that. That's far beyond me, but at least in terms of creativity and support from professors and peers and audiences, at least in the college level, which is again what I'm more familiar with, I think things are very healthy.

[Brittney] Interesting and definitely very insightful. So what's next for you? Do you have any other projects that you're currently working on?

[Cameron] Composition has definitely taken a backseat since starting a theory degree. There are some projects that I work on, on and off. For example, there's an orchestra piece that I'm working on, untitled, but it's it's kind of Shostakovich-y and it's fun and chromatic and stuff. I also, well, last night I started a piano trio instead of doing the homework that I was supposed to do. So that's exciting. Obviously not not much on that front. And then I've also, I'm also a songwriter. And so I've been recording some songs, writing some songs and doing that on the side as well. But no, no, no fun projects that I can point to and direct people towards.

[Brittney] Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And just one last question before we end, how could the audience best contact you for any questions or inquiries they might have?

[Cameron] Well, you can send me an email at any time. My email is, should I give my email on this?

[Brittney] I think we'll have a link on the episode.

[Cameron] Oh, right. Well, you can email me any time. My email is posted on the link so you can send me an email if you'd like to get in contact. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this piece or anything that you think is worth me saying, I'll say it. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

[Brittney] Thank you so much for joining us today, and thanks again for sharing your piece Hibernaculum with us.

[Aaron] Hello, this is Aaron D'Zurilla, the regular host of the Theorist Composer Collaboration, and I want to thank you for listening to the episode. I also want to give a big thank you to our first ever guest host and music theorist on the program, Brittney Pflanz and the composer Cameron Gwyn, alongside his piece Hibernaculum, for joining the TCC. Their contact info will be compiled in the description of this episode, and I would appreciate it if you could reach out to them to show them some support. Both Brittney and Cameron's information will also be readily compiled on their corresponding contributor pages on our host website as well. For a little bit of background as to why this episode is special for me, I had been trying for a while to rope in fellow self-identified music theorists to be guest hosts on the podcast since, essentially, the inception of this program. The description of this podcast as a collaboration was very purposeful, as although it naturally through its format would have two different people from the world of music, one composer and one theorist, I really wanted there to be a larger ecosystem of contributors on both ends of the interviewer and interviewee. I had thought since I was the one who created the TCC, and I work on all of the content, that I would at least be the primary host, but it has turned out that I am the host of the TCC, which is probably much more reasonable. I mean, I enjoy it a lot and I've had a great time since the show was started and I'm certainly not complaining, but the vision of the podcast has shifted a bit over time. Perhaps the original idea was a little naive, and I also did start the podcast right at the height of academic busy season, that being the end of the spring semester, so maybe not the most well timed when asking people to offer up their very, very limited free time. And also podcasting, hosting, and doing such things is not everyone's forte and might be out of their comfort zone, and there's nothing wrong with that. I hope to make including guest hosts a semi-regular thing, a guest theorist that is, but not with any set schedule for it. So with all of that background out of the way, I'm incredibly thankful and grateful for Brittney Pflanz to take the leap and be our first guest host on the TCC. She did a phenomenal job talking with Cameron Gwynn about his background and Hibernaculum. And on that piece, Hibernaculum, I really enjoyed its atmospheric qualities. I'm sure that a recording or a live performance experience with the wind machine would be even more of a special time, but even without its inclusion in the recording that's within the episode, it is still a charming and fun piece of music. One thing that Cameron talked about that I found particularly intriguing was the idea of prescriptive music theory or theoretical concepts that are aimed at composers for practical means as opposed to analytical. I have not, or at least not very often, heard of this being described as prescriptive theory, but I really like the terminology. I would love, on a future episode, to talk more about such things. So I'll say it one more time, thank you so much to Brittney Pflanz and Cameron Gwynn for joining the podcast and being part of the TCC. For further updates and notifications on the Theorist Composer Collaboration, make sure to subscribe to our email listing on the homepage of our host website and follow our Instagram and Facebook pages. Relevant links are in the description. You can also listen to future episodes through our host website, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and YouTube. So make sure you subscribe to the platform of your choosing. Again, all relevant links are in the description. TCC episodes are posted weekly on Mondays, and don't miss our weekly blog posts, which go live a few days after a new episode is added. I'm also excited to promote that our next featured composer is my very good friend Ben Williams and his album, On My Own. We go back and forth about our experiences in music academia and the university system, reminiscing and critiquing what we see in the world of music. Make sure to follow our social media accounts and relevant streaming platforms because you won't want to miss it in the next episode. But until then, this is Aaron, and thank you for joining the TCC.