The Yellow Pages presents an interesting example of Post-Modern music. After listening to this piece, it sounds Post-Minimalist in approach. I say this because the piece takes a short, thematic musical idea and expands it along different parameters throughout the chamber ensemble. The Yellow Pages also uses different tonal centers in order to link each section.
This piece uses a sonically interesting instrumentation. Even though the arrangement could be viewed as a quintet or sextet (Flute [Piccolo], Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano), Torke does not specify the instrumentation in this way; he simply calls it a “chamber ensemble.” One unusual aspect of this piece stems from what happens with the flute. The flautist frequently switches this instrumental part with the piccolo, as the composer indicates in mm. 5 of the score. To avoid confusion during performance, he directs the performer when to pick up the instrument and where the part begins (The first time, this takes place at mm. 7).
Even though the fragments in the violin suggest the main motive in mm. 5, I hear it as beginning in mm. 7 with the sixteenth-note patterns in the Flute (Piccolo) and Clarinet. The pitch content for this motivic idea appears in two phrases as (GCCDGAB) and (BCAAABG). In terms of pitch-class content, this translates to (700279e) and (e0999e7). This two-phrase motive appears throughout the score in different guises, especially in the augmentation and diminution. In relation to the unusual title of the piece, I see this motive in terms of its phonetic content: probably a musical interpretation of the sentence, “Look in the Yellow Pages.” Torke enables every instrument in the chamber ensemble to experiment with this idea, as when he distributes it to the piano beginning in mm.39.
The Yellow Pages consists of a combination of different harmonic structures. At times, this piece exhibits polyphony, as is evident in the opening a minor chord in first inversion, played by the entire ensemble. In other instances, the music occurs in unison or several octaves apart, like in mm. 39 and mm. 154 in the piano. The score cycles through many different tonal centers. Three of them stick out more prominently for me: G Major (mm. 5), A-Flat Major (mm. 11-12) and E Major (mm. 63). Torke often adds extra notes to embellish or blur the motive and create brief moments of tension when transitioning into the next tonal center.
The Yellow Pages features an intense rhythmic drive. Torke indicates a tempo marking of 120 beats per quarter note. Although the music features brief rests, it maintains this pulse throughout the score. This is especially noticeable in the rapid sixteenth-note patterns. Rhythmic displacement (or what could be heard as such) also occurs in mm. 45 in the clarinet, violin and cello. This does not mean that the composer maintains this frantic motion all the time, however. The music also features moments where the instruments play in longer durational values through augmentation. This gives the aural illusion that the music decreases in speed.
Perhaps, the most difficult aspect of The Yellow Pages stems from determining its overall formal structure. Even though this work uses tonality, the form of the piece is neither visually nor aurally obvious: partly because the music tends to return to the same tonal center (G Major). One needs to study this piece several times in order to understand the direction that Torke takes with this piece.
I view the form of The Yellow Pages as a cyclical piece. The first reason for this argument centers around the opening inverted a minor chord. This chord occurs at both the beginning and ending of the piece (mm. 182-184, with an added f-sharp in the left-hand of the piano part), although it may seem out of place when one hears the entire piece. The different sections of the piece could be based on the aspects of timbre and dynamic contrast. The music frequently shifts from loud, heavy polyphonic sections and subsections, to softer, more reduced harmonic textures towards the end. To keep the music cohesive, however, the music refers again to the energetic polyphonic texture from mm.4 (except with more dissonant harmonies that increase the tension of the music).