electronics
-2022-
dasta electronic music| Instrumentation: | electronic music |
| Premiere: | 18 September 2022 – Tokyo, Japan |
| Duration: | approximately 10 minutes |
| Program note: |
| This purely electronic piece acts as a beginning of an upcoming chamber-pantomim-ballet based on the poetry collection ”The Tale of Fatumeh” by the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907-1968). It is the tale of Fatumeh, a girl sold into prostitution by her mother, then for a while kept as a concubine by a prince, abondened but surviving by force of spirit. Although the story is conventionally tragic, the vitality of Fatumeh brings a completely new dimension to the story.The collection of poems are devided into two parts; the first naming the poems Naẓm 1-29, the second Tesbīḥ 1-29.Naẓm, literally meaning “stringing (pearls, beads, etc.)” early acquired the meaning of “versifying” and became almost synonymous with “poetry”. The comparison of a poem to a necklace, or verses to pearls, is apt in view of the relative independence of the individual verses, held together on the string of the uniform metre and rhyme.The string of beads is usually made of 3 x 33 beads. Between these groups of 33 a distinguishing bead is inserted, often in the shape of a snake’s head. This special bead goes by many names, one of which is ”dasta”.As mentioned above, Ekelöf doesn’t use the number 33 but instead the prime-number 29, which he thought would get a better ”sum” in the finished work. And just as with the pearl rope, he inserts special poems in-between.The material of the electronics are made in two different ways: by electronic synthesis and by modified recordings of various objects such as bells, piano, violin, etc. In the end of the piece the first ”Snakehead” poem, in a fragmented version, can be heard (in the voice of Kazuko Ihara). In autumn or in spring – What does it matter In youth or in age – So what? Still You disappear In the picture of it All You have disappeared, You disappeared now, just now or a thousand years ago But Your disappearance itself remains. |
2020
Fernangekommen/Hinweggegangen/Fernglänzend
percussion with live-electronics
| Instrumentation: | vibraphone, 16 objects (3 wood, 2 glass, 5 metal, 2 stone, 2 ceramic and 2 skin, 4 glass marbles (2x5cm and 2x10cm in diameter) & 2 loose metal snares, live-electronics (max-patch), at least 2 speakers. All instruments should be amplified (vibraphone in stereo and connected to computer running the max-patch, objects with 16 contact michrophones.) |
| Duration: | approximately 22 minutes |
| Written for: | Tom de Cock |
-2020-
let the atrocious images haunt us – part I of Cycle II from synthetic fragments
electronic music
| Instrumentation: | electronic music |
| Premiere: | 18 June 2021 – Malmö, Sweden |
| Duration: | approximately 5 minutes |
| Program note: |
| Does shock have term limits? How disconnected are we? Or: Are we disconnected at all? – our supersaturated time may be hauling us inside death. With our senses and spirits fatigued, our incited souls nevertheless continue to reel from what we see. The cosmopolis of images thrives in our hiving minds. We are far from the realities of tanks, refugees, smart-bombs, bleeding. Yet we are engulfed by images that leave people (us, undone) bruised, ignited, hardly voyeurs, more like bewildered participants in a sensory conflict whose domain is also the psyche. We welcome clarity in speech yet still can’t sort out our confusions. War, rarely in our interest, yet sometimes necessary: but what is the necessity now? Yet even after reverberations of disaster, the images repeating, we appear to know no other way except to start another war. National consensus means that tragic images “haunt,” but some priority compels us to override those impressions. Our lives are touched, and yet killing doesn’t stop. |
2015-17
fluchtlinien-E
for flute, spatialised electroacoustic sound and live electronics
| Instrumentation: | flute (with B foot), electronics |
| Premiere: | 8 July 2018, Tokyo; Kazuko Ihara-flute, Denerin-electronics |
| Duration: | approx. 8 minutes |
| Score: | Buy score at BabelScores! |
| Recording: | Recording available at BabelScores. Use link above! |
| Program note: |
|
fluchtlinien – With this concept Deleuze and Guattari points at possible alternatives to the dominating approach. One example is how the music sends out lines of flight (fluchtlinien) when it multiplies and spreads like a diverse weed of sound. Fluchtlininen thus indicates the potential for something different to take shape, for example, the opportunity of re-thinking. Every form of life – a body, a social group, an organism or even a concept – consists of links and connections. Genes come together to form cells; cells are collected to form tribes. The term ‘human being’ is an example of such an interconnection of reason, a certain type of body (white, male), speech, and so on. But every connection also allows a fluchtlinie; there is always the potential for genetic mutation. The definition of man as rational also enables a dispute about what constitutes humanity: e.g., is it rational to put up a stock of nuclear weapons? Thus, every definition wears, every territorialisationtorium or body, the opportunities that opens up for a fluchtlinie that could turn it into something else. In fluchtlinien-E the piece gets another dimension by setting the extremely thoroughly notated flute material with a semi-improvisation part for electronics that just has to obey some simple rules. The electronic part is in many ways also an extension of the percussion part from fluchtlinien-D. |
-2016-
arteria
electronic music
| Instrumentation: | electronic music |
| Premiere: | 23 september 2016, Mexico City |
| Duration: | 7 minutes 10 seconds |
| Program note: |
|
Arteria (from Greek ἀρτηρία (artēria), meaning “windpipe, artery”) are blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart. In this electro-acoustic piece, which forms part IX of a larger piece for cello solo, electronics and visual performance, I have imagined this vessels, pulsating blood through the body. Formally the piece contains 2 “parts” building a sort of arch, or increase/decrease of blood pressure of you will. The first part is static in its character, with one sound with different microtonal changes in the 6 channels respectively. The second part, by contrast, is very varied with different information being sent through the ”arterias”, so to speak. All sounds are electronically produced and the whole sounds-scape is clearly electronic. |
Recording: (stereomix)
-2016-
O ew'ge Nacht
for piano, cello and electronics
| Instrumentation: | piano, cello and electronics |
| Premiere: | 28 June 2016, Santiago de Compostela; Vertixe Sonora (David Durán, Thomas Piel) |
| Duration: | approx. 19 minutes |
| Commissioned by: | Vertixe Sonora |
| Score: | Buy score at BabelScores! |
| Program note: |
|
When approach to participate in the project “Sound Correspondences” I was told that the concert was to be related to a collective exhibition of the CGAC. For me the artist involved is María Ruido who presented her work “La memoria interior” for me. While there may be certain connections between our works (construction of memory would be one), what immediately struck me was the very beginning where, in complete darkness, Nur Stille, Stille (from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte) is heard. The title of my piece, O ew’ge nacht, is also taken from Die Zauberflöte where it is a short recitative; the topic being that of questions about the afterlife, eternal life, and love. If the recitative is a Message from Beyond, this music struggles, through the performers (as some kind of deformed Papageno and Pamina figures), trying to ask a question. The effect of struggle is twofold, for while the music itself articulates a search through potential material, the player is faced with notation of great complexity from which a performance must be extrapolated. In this sense, the struggle is not only that of the extreme performance situation, but also one of creating a piece of music of any real significance. |
-2015-
astrocyte
electronic music
| Instrumentation: | electronic music |
| Premiere: | 26 Mars 2016, Tuscaloosa, USA |
| Duration: | 3 minutes |
| Program note: |
|
astrocyte (Astro from Greek astron = star and cyte from Greek “kyttaron” = cell) are characteristic star-shaped glial cells in the brain and spinal cord. Recent research (2015) has shown that these cells have a important role to help the brain to remember. They have also been showed to occilate.
In this electro-acoustic piece, which forms part III of the piece “Ontology of Becoming” for cello solo, electronics and visual performance, I have imagined this “cell – world”; how these cells sends information and how that may sound like. Formally the piece contains 10 “phrases” of different lengths. (These different phrases; their lengths, construction etc. are connected to the piece in its whole and could be regarded as a way at looking into the brain and see, through the astrocytes, how it treats the memory (and pre-memory) of the piece… a kind of information flow of every part… but condensed). astrocyte forms the 3rd part of a large scale work for cello, electronics and visual performance. |
Recording:
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Demo of visual performance (by T. Marcusson:
2013
Unhörbares hörbar machen – Part II - Hyōshiawazu (拍子不合)
for electronic music
| Instrumentation: | electronic music |
| Premiere: | Mars 16, 2013 – @ Saravah in Tokyo |
| Duration: | 6′ 13″ |
| Program note: |
| The whole underlying structure of this piece is drawn from various features found in Japanese Nō Theatre. There are three types of tempo in Nō (Hiranori, Chūnori and Ōnori) which is articulated by the tripartite structure of this piece, all having its own pace. These three parts are (approximately) divided in the proportions 4733 and 6647 which makes: A = 169 seconds, B = 119 seconds, C = 84,6 seconds.
On the more poetic side the piece is a sort of comment to an imagined Nō play drawing its form, intervals and rhythmic patterns from the Nō piece “Chū no mai” which, as it were, is acting like a sort of “cantus firmus” but only revealing itself the very last seconds. Tools used in composition process: Max/MSP 6 (granulation, synthesis, stochastic sound mass, sound freeze and more, all programmed by H. Denerin), IannisX (fractal walk), Ircam’s SPAT (spatialization), Cubase (mixing). Chart of formal outline with listing of sonic entities of the 21 layers in part 1:
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| Comment: |
| WORK No.18 |
Recording:
2009
Rotations-Shadows
electronic music
| Instrumentation: | electronic music (for 8 speakers)(mix for 5.1 and a stereomix exists) |
| Premiere: | 2009-03-23; Malmö Acadamy of Music, Sweden |
| Duration: | 21′ 41″ |
| Program note: |
| ROTATIONS – The piece consists of 48 different voices whish all has its own shape, range, dynamic envelope, sound composition, tempo and rhythm. Every one of these voices rotates at different speeds around the room; the slowest taking 21 minutes for one rotation, the fastest 0.5 seconds. An unbelievable room-polyphony is created. Obviously not all 48 voices are heard all the time, but in the most dense part, at 15 minutes, they all come together.
SHADOWS – “As the ideas are the principal forms of things, according to which all is formed … so we should form in us the shadows of ideas … so that they may be adaptable to all possible formations. We form them in us, as in the revolution of wheels. If you know any other way, try it.” (Giordano Bruno: Shadows (De umbris idearum)) |
| Comment: |
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The different voices in ROTATIONS-SHADOWS where all created from one original melody with the use of IRCAM open music, mainly with different scale objects applied both vertically and horizontally. The sounds where created with Csound and the spatializing with IRCAM Spatialisateur.
Under Heaven is a cycle consisting of 7 parts, each for different kinds of ensembles. They are all composed of the same material and using similar ways of forming. This, however, does not mean that they don’t have a personality but only belong to different cultures – different ways of growing. |
Recording excerpt: