MARKO CICILIANI
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Electronics and Mixed Music
Körperklang

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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