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KÖRPERKLANG
for viola, alto-sax, piano and live-electronics composed in 2003 duration: 13' In KörperKlang the musicians are asked to arrange a number of sections within a variable order. Physical aspects, like the length of a breath while playing a tone on the saxophone, the duration until a certain sound died away on the piano, or the length of a bow on the viola, are determining the durations of various sections and numbers of repetitions of certain modules. The physicality of the performance space also becomes part of the piece: sounds are played back and re-recorded all until the specific resonance frequencies of the space dominate over the original sound. This technique - first used in Alvin Lucier's "I'm sitting in a room" - provides a sounding fingerprint of the space that is then interwoven in the composition. The electronic part consists of a program written in SuperCollider that is recording certain fragments of the performance from three different angles: - from the inside of the instruments, - from the inside of the venue and - from a room adjacent to the venue. Here again the acoustic characteristics of the architectural situation and the instruments are musically brought in. Snippets of the recordings are being put together to a mosaic-like texture, that is providing a counterpoint to the swinging rhythms dominating the musician's parts. KörperKlang was comissioned by the Fonds voor de scheppende Toonkunst, written for ensemble Intégrales and was premiered in Belfast/Northern Ireland in March 2003. |
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