Sei brevi brani per percussioni ed elettronica di Kaija Saariaho. In ciascuno dei brani l’autrice sviluppa un aspetto ritmico particolare collegato a quello specifico materiale musicale.
Le sonorità strumentali sono arricchite da suoni naturali, canti rituali e altri suoni percussivi eseguiti dal percussionista giapponese Shinti Ueno, registrati e modificati dall’elettronica.
Kaija Saariaho – Six Japanese Gardens (1993/95)
I composed Lo Spazio tra le Pietre (The Space between the Stones) for the “Music and Architecture” event, organized by the Bonporti Conservatory of Trento and Riva del Garda on 18/10/2008.
From my point of view, the relationships between music and architecture do not end with the important question of designing places for music, but have deeper aspects that certainly affect the composition and reach its fruition.
If, on the one hand, a building exists statically in space, it cannot be appreciated in its entirety without a time interval. Its global form is never evident in its entirety, not even from above. It is formed in the memory of those who approached it from many sides and saw its shape get lost, while the construction details and then the materials become gradually more evident. Similarly, a piece of music statically exists in some form of notation and unfolds over time. The temporal listening gradually highlights the internal structure, the constitutive elements and the details.
Thus, it is possible to think of a piece of music as a static object and a building as a dynamic structure. But it is from a compositional point of view that the analogies become closer.
When I work with fully synthetic sounds that don’t derive from any real sound, as in the case of this piece, I generally follow a top-down approach. At first I imagine a shape, often in spatial terms and then I build the materials and methods with which to make it.
Thus, as in architecture, for me composing a piece means building the basic materials starting from the minimum components and modulating the temporal and spatial void that separates them, trying to assemble them in a coherent environment.
The parameters I manipulate, as in instrumental music, are temporal and spatial, but, unlike instrumental music, they extend to the microscopic level. Thus, the manipulation of time does not stop at the lengths of the notes, but goes down to the attack and decay times of the individual components of each sound (the partial harmonics or inharmonics). Similarly, on a spatial level my intervention is not limited to the interval, which determines the character of the harmonic relations, but goes as far as the distance between the partials that form a single sound, determining, to a certain extent, its timbre.
The point, however, is that, in my work, methods are much more important than materials. Indeed, even the materials themselves, in the end, derive from the methods. My problem, in fact, is not writing a sequence of sounds and develop it, but to generate a surface, a “texture”, having a precise perceptive value.
In fact, this is texture music. Even when you think you are hearing a single sound, you actually hear at least 4/5 of them. And I’m not talking about partials, but about complex sounds, each of which has from a minimum of 4 partials, up to a maximum of about 30. For example, the initial G #, which comes from nothing and is then surrounded by other notes ( FA, Bb, FA #, A) is made up of 8 sounds with very little difference in pitch changing every 0.875 seconds. This creates the perception of a single sound, but with a certain type of internal movement.
Texture music, micro-polyphony that moves far below the threshold of base 12 temperament. In fact, here I work with an octave divided into 1000 equal parts and in certain points of the piece thousands of complex sounds coexist simultaneously to generate a single ” crash “.
It follows that it is not possible to write such a “score” by hand. I have personally designed and programmed a compositional software called AlGen (AlgorithmicGeneration) through which I drive the masses and the computer generates the detail (the single sounds).
AlGen already existed in 1984 and had been used to compose Wires, to which this piece owes a lot, but, while at that time it was just a routine block linked to the Music360 synthesis program by Barry Vercoe (the direct ancestor of today’s CSound), for this occasion it has been completely rewritten and is a software in its own right. In current version it incorporates various probabilistic distributions, serial methods, linear and non-linear algorithms to better control the generated surfaces and above all their evolution.
Nonetheless, AlGen does not incorporate any form of “intelligence”. It does not make decisions based on harmony, context, etc. It is a blind executor of orders. It generate values from a probabilistic set or computes functions and generates notes, but fortunately it does not think and decide. What it deals with are pure numbers and it doesn’t even know if it is calculating durations, densities or frequencies.
Lo Spazio tra le Pietre was composed in my studio in September – October 2008 and synthesized in 4 channels by CSound. Synthesis algorithm: simple FM.
CSound score generated by the AlGen assisted composition software written by the author.
The whole piece is thought of as a spatial structure. Its skyline is evident in the sonogram at the top of the page and its structure. as an alternation of shapes, full and empty, is clearly visible in the enlargement of a fragment of about 1 minute (below, as usual you can click on the images to enlarge them).
Mauro Graziani – Lo Spazio tra le Pietre (The Space between the Stones) (2008), stereo reduction from original quad
Nocturne by Gordon Green
An improvisation embellished in real time with MIDI processing software, uses the resonance of the piano to create a still, nocturnal atmosphere wherein different harmonies can be mulled over in a leisurely way. The software embellished the improvisation by cycling through repeating sets of intervals, and fragments were recalled and varied as the improvisation unfolded. The original idea for this came from the bird-call transcriptions in Olivier Messiaen’s piano music, which often use more sophisticated variations of similar techniques.
Gordon Green’s (b. 1960) varied influences include the work of Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, and Olivier Messiaen, as well as Indian music, cartoon music, and John Philip Sousa marches. His music combines the expressivity of improvised gestures with the sonic capabilities of electronics, and is informed by his work as a painter and software developer.
A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Green studied music at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and computer art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, with additional studies at the Berklee College of Music, Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, and New York University. His principal teachers were Rudolph Palmer and Richard Wilson. Green has been commissioned by pianist Frederick Moyer, the Ethos Percussion Group, and Schween-Hammond Duo, and supported by the Jerome Foundation, Millay Colony, and W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts. His music can be found on the Capstone, Centaur, and JRI labels; his recent release, Serpentine Sky, is a surround-sound recording of music for multiple computer-controlled pianos.
Gordon Green – Nocturne (2001), for piano and computer-controlled Disklavier grand piano
Gordon Green performer
Miya Masaoka presenta se stessa come
musician, composer, sound artist – has created works for koto and electronics, Laser Koto, field recordings, laptop, video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological response of plants, the human brain and her own body. Within these varied contexts her performance work investigates the interactive, collaborative aspects of sound, improvisation, nature and society.
In effetti è attiva in molti campi cha vanno dalla musica per koto (anche elettrificato e in versione laser), alla musica per ensembles, al field recording e alla sperimentazione con piante e onde cerebrali, come potete vedere guardando i suoi lavori.
Qui vi presentiamo un estratto da For Birds, Planes & Cello. Come dice il titolo, si tratta di una composizione che utilizza una serie di field recording di aerei e uccelli. I due strati sonori sono mediati dal violoncello che agisce come elemento unificante. In questo estratto di 5 minuti (l’unico liberamente disponibile: il CD è distribuito dalla sua etichetta SolitaryB), l’azione del violoncello è limitata a lunghi suoni, più o meno armonici che si pongono come trait d’union fra le due registrazioni.
No, non si tratta della sonata 29 op. 106 di Ludwig Van, ma di un recente lavoro elettroacustico di Massimo Biasioni, qui in versione Jekyll & Hyde.
Il brano, originariamente quadrafonico, è basato su campioni registrati all’interno di un pianoforte a coda. Lo strumento non è suonato in maniera convenzionale, i campioni sono stati ottenuti percuotendo, pizzicando o sfregando con oggetti le corde e il corpo dello strumento, allo scopo di ottenere le risonanze del pianoforte piuttosto che suoni con altezza definita.
Il mezzo elettronico è stato poi utilizzato per analizzare e risintetizzare tali suoni complessi, estraendone di volta in volta determinate caratteristiche, esplorando la zona che va dal rumore al suono intonato, modificando l’attacco del suono su modello di una corda pizzicata, disponendo infine il materiale derivato nello spazio quadrifonico e assemblandolo lungo lo spazio temporale allo scopo di costruire un forma organica.
I software usati sono Max/MSP e ProTools. La durata è di undici minuti.
Qui lo ascoltate in streaming (att.ne: inizia molto piano). Potete scaricare l’intero CD “Inside the instruments (l’instrument outragè)”, con altri 4 brani, dal sito dell’autore.
Massimo Biasioni – Hammerklavier – 2008
Un altro brano di Tod Machover dopo Light.
Si tratta di Soft Morning, City! che presentiamo con le note dell’autore, è per soprano, contrabbasso e suoni elettronici sia sintetici che ottenuti elaborando gli strumenti. Il testo è tratto dal monologo di Anna Livia Plurabelle, nel Finnegan’s Wake di James Joyce.
Soft Morning, City! (which was commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for Jane Manning and Barry Guy) presents its qualities more immediately and directly. This is due mostly to the presence of James Joyce’s text, the final monologue from Finnegans Wake. The particular passage that I have chosen here has interested me for many years. Coming at the end of this monumental epic, it is a melancholy and moving swansong of the book’s main female character, Anna Livia Plurabelle. Now appearing as a washerwoman, she recalls her life as she walks along Dublin’s River Liffey at daybreak. Many different planes of narrative are interlaced, the mundane with the spiritual, the sexual with the aesthetic, the personal with the universal. Joyce achieves the closest thing to the temporal parallelism of music by snipping each layer of narrative into short, constantly varying and overlapping phrases. The great beauty is that Joyce creates not the eclectic choppiness that such a procedure might suggest, but a majestic form of tremendous power and sweep. It seems to me that Joyce achieves this through an organization of the over-all sound of the passage in an unprecedented way. Listening to a reading-aloud of the text, one is carried by its cadences, tidal flows, crescendos and dvina-awavs, even while being sometimes onlv half-sure . , of the meaning of certain words. it is the rare combination of polyphonic verbal richness with inherent sonic structure that makes it ideal for a musical setting.
My setting takes the form of an aria, though a rather extended and elaborate one. Attention is always focused on the soprano, who alternates between long melodic lines and short interjections that change character quickly. The double bass lends support to the soprano, provides harmonic definition and melodic counterpoint, and often adds musical commentary.
The computer tape helps to amplify, mirror and extend the myriad reflections of Anna Livia, but at the same time acts as a unifying force. To emphasize closeness to the live performers, a new process is added whereby soprano and double bass music is directly transformed by the computer, producing at times sounds that seem to fuse the two into one musical image.
The work begins in stillness, with the soprano evoking the atmosphere of morning, surrounded by an ethereal transformation of her own breath. With the entrance of the double bass, various different strands of the textual polyphony are introduced one after the other, each with characteristic music. As the sonority of the tape gets closer to that of the live instruments, the musical layers begin to overlap with greater rapidity. In the lengthy middle section, many different layers are superimposed so that at the moment of greatest intensity and complexity a new unity is formed.
From this plateau, the rest of the work is built. Quiet communion is achieved between soprano and bass. This leads directly to a long melodic section, with soprano accompanied by a continuous harmonic progression in bass and tape.
After a final moment of lonely reflection (“O bitter ending!…”), an enormous wave washes over Anna Livia and carries her away. A quiet coda uses delicate, distant images to recall the stillness of the work’s opening. A chapter is closed, a deep breath taken, and we prepare, led by Joyce’s Liffey (“Riverrun…”), to begin again.
Tod Machover, Soft Morning, City!, per soprano, contrabbasso e suoni elettronici.
Testi tratti da “Finnegans Wake” di James Joyce
Jane Manning, soprano; Barry Guy, Double Bass. Computer parts realized at IRCAM, Paris
Qui vi faccio ascoltare Light, un pezzo del 1979 scritto per l’Ensemble Intercontemporain più due flussi elettronici preregistrati ottenuti mediante elaborazione di suoni strumentali.
L’autore spiega in dettaglio il brano:
The piece takes its title from a quote by Rider Haggard, the English fantasy author: “Occasionally one sees the Light, one touches the pierced feet, one thinks that the peace which passes understanding is gained – then all is gone again.” The atmosphere and expressive content of the work reflect these words, which also influenced the choice and treatment of musical materials.
From a single melody (heard in entirety only at the climax of the piece) a complex polyphony is developed that creates layers of simultaneously overlapping, shifting musical planes, like independent clouds that move each at its own speed, and part momentarily to allow rays of light to pass through. Each of these layers is characterized by a different musical elaboration of the same basic materials. The largest contrast is between the instrumental ensemble (14 players) and two separate computer-generated 4track tapes. Each of these tapes represents a different (and opposing) approach to the elaboration of musical structures. The first uses traditional instrumental timbres and playing techniques as a starting point and transcends the “normal” by extending past the human capacities. The second explores microscopic details of sounds derived from these same instruments, although the connection between the two worlds is made clear only gradually during the course of the piece.
The instrumental ensemble is musically situated between these two approaches. It is divided into four sub groups (string quartet; woodwind quartet; piano, harp and wood/skin percussion; trumpet, trombone and metal percussion), each of which develops a distinct set of musical tendencies, and possesses a clear timbral identity. The piece was conceived for IRCAM’s experimental concert hall, or Espace de Projection, where all acoustical and physical characteristics are controllable. The instrumental ensembles are placed in the four comers of the room, on platforms, with the public seated in the middle. Tape I is distributed through 4 speakers, one placed over each instrumental group, thus emphasizing the “instrumental” departure point for this tape’s electronic sound. Tape II emanates from a set of 4 speakers placed on the ceiling of the hall, to exaggerate the separateness of this ethereal and delicate murmuring that develops gradually into the thunderous crashes that mark the climax of the piece.
The piece begins by emphasizing the distinctness of all its various layers. Each group follows its own developmental principles in a section that culminates in a series of cadenzas. After each group has had its say, all material is combined in the large solo of Tape I which builds until the first crashes of Tape II. In the quiet that follows, a new, more homogeneous order is built up gradually, and leads to a final section of delicate chamber music, where equality prevails among all the diverse elements. The main harmony of the piece provides the basis for a meditative coda, which dissolves into the isolation and bareness of the final piano notes, a shadow of the defiance and brilliance shown by the same instrument at other points of the piece.
The musical form is dramatic, the expressive mood quite romantic, and both are founded on a conviction of mine: that faced with todafs confusing kaleidoscope of equally valid parallel lifestyles, cultures and ideas, the only response is to search quietly but resolutely for a deeper truth, perhaps out of nostalgia for a lost simplicity, but hopefully from a courage aid belief in a “new order” of synthesis and unity behind the surface choas. It is this search that I have tried to portray in Light.
Tod Machover – Light (1979), per ensemble e suoni elettronici
Members of the Ensemble InterContemporain with two computer-generated tapes. Conducted by Peter Eötvös. Computer parts realized at IRCAM, Paris.
This new sound output [Seroton EP] of Sascha Neudeck (biochemist and musician, based in vienna) is to carry out a test by the idea of different drone-interpretations. It is more a collection of different quotations in doing with such these topics. The result is quite different to his previous work, which was more noise- and random-oriented. This new section is quite a try to arrange such these things – from totally abstract elements to poetic narrative parts. Different ideas come out from an abstractness and get into an often sparely melodic part – otherwise a changeover from the lightness of sound into a deep and noise drone, which is interrupted by fragement spikes of sound. Neudeck is working only with software, sinus generators, self produced sound equipment and lately with the sidrassi organ (totally crazy tool). So I am often surprised by the result, when it sounds like a field recording. But when I see, how he works in his nerdy laboratory, I understand that his output can irritate.
[ liner notes by Heribert Friedl ]
Some excerpts
La particolarità di questo brano di David Jaffe risiede nel fatto che si tratta di un concerto per pianoforte in cui la parte del solista è eseguita da un percussionista (Andrew Schloss) che controlla un pianoforte midi (il disklavier) per mezzo del Radio Drum.
Si tratta di un dispositivo i cui battenti inviano a quattro sensori disposti agli angoli della tavola, la loro posizione in termini di X, Y e Z.
Questi dati vengono utilizzati per calcolare il punto di impatto e la forza, ma vengono inviati sempre, non solo quando i battenti toccano la superficie. Ne consegue che un apposito software può anche utilizzare il movimento dei battenti in aria per ricavarne dei dati che vengono poi trasformati in note midi inviate al disklavier.
Si tratta quindi di una interfaccia che rileva il movimento, non di una semplice percussione digitalizzata.
Il brano è scritto per pianoforte e ensemble strumentale (mandolin, guitar, harp, harpsichord, bass, harmonium and 2 percussionists). Ecco un estratto.
Varie note sul brano sul sito di Jaffe.
Il Nome è un brano elettroacustico (soprano + nastro magnetico) composto da Richard Karpen nel 1987 su testo tratto da “Il nome di Maria Fresu” di A. Zanzotto + un verso dall’Orfeo di Monteverdi.
Maria Fresu è una delle 84 persone uccise nell’attentato del 2 agosto 1980 alla stazione di Bologna. Non è rimasto niente di lei (Karpen è stato in Italia vari anni e ha lavorato al CSC a Padova).
Il materiale sonoro è formato in gran parte da elaborazioni della voce del soprano. Vengono utilizzati anche vetri rotti, una singola nota di violino e un tam-tam. Le elaborazioni sono in buona parte cambi di altezza o stretching temporale senza alterazione dell’altezza (in qualche caso la durata è stata estesa fino a 20 volte l’originale) + filtraggi. Grande attenzione è posta alla sovrapposizione e concatenazione dei frammenti.
Testi
E il nome di Maria Fresu
continua a scoppiare
all’ora dei pranzi
in ogni casseruola
in ogni pentola
in ogni boccone
in ogni rutto – scoppiato e disseminato –
in milioni di dimenticanze, di comi, bburp.
A. Zanzotto, Il nome di Maria Fresu, da Idioma, Milano, Mondadori, 1986
Tu sei morta, mia vita, ed io respiro?
Tu mi hai lasciato per mai più tornare, ed io rimango?
No.
Monteverdi – Orfeo
Richard Karpen – Il Nome (1987), per soprano e banda magnetica – J. Bettina, soprano
Richard Karpen is a native of New York, where he studied composition with Charles Dodge, Gheorghe Costinescu, and Morton Subotnick. He received his doctorate in composition from Stanford University, where he also worked at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
He has been the recipient of many awards, grants and prizes including those from the National Endowment for the Arts, the ASCAP Foundation, the Bourges Contest in France, and the Luigi Russolo Foundation in Italy.
Founding Director of the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington.