Encapsulations

By thisisuser on September 16, 2019

for accordion solo and live computer
composed 2019, duration 18 minutes
world premiere October 28 2019, Slovakia
Peter Katina – accordion, Lars Graugaard – live computer
commissioned by Peter Katina
dedicated to Peter Katina

The notion for Encapsulations is that mid-term memory (or working memory) influences our music appreciation, and the ambition is to make this a feature of the composition itself. For that reason, the live computer records the solo accordion in real-time, re-inserting it into the musical ongoings in different forms that resemble the ‘colourings’ which memory does. This can be as full chunks of time and bands of frequencies (from less that two and up to six-seven seconds), and as more vague recollections as re-synthesis of the ‘mined’ material. The result is akin to sets of diapositives of the musical past that can slide across the presence.

For this reason, the computer does not make use of the common procedure of processing and enlarging the live instrument, but must instead sound as a diistinct sound-source. The selection and re-creation by the computer is handled by the composer through dedicated programming, and the resulting amalgam consequently holds an added element of ‘instant composition’ that unfolds in conjunction with ‘distributed composition’ of the fully written-out accordion part, performed by the soloist.

Encapsulations was composed 2019 as a commissioned by Peter Katina, to whom it is dedicated.

Nebula

By thisisuser on August 16, 2019

for piano solo
composed 2019, duration 9 minutes
composed while resident composer at CAPUT Ensemble

Nebula is a composition that develops on certain ideas on micro-timing that go back to Three Places from 2011. It has been present in other compositions since then, and it concerns different usages of minute timing fluctuations as an integral part of a composition. That is, instructions for the use of what is traditionally a performative rubato, but here used in certain ways and in specific circumstances.

The first part of Nebula is of a gentle legato-tenuto style with a round and soft sonority, but the individual voices accompany the crescendoes by a speeding up of the tempo, just as the diminuendos are performed with a similar slowing down.

Treated independently this way, the simultaneous speeding up and slowing down of concurrent voices renders impossible the notated vertical rhythmic coincidence, since the voices continuously shift towers and away from each other. An absolute coincidence is obviously not intended either, as the goal is the notion of rhythmic ‘detuning’ that a precise notation never could achieve, since this technique belongs to the realm of what is customarily known as performance features. This ‘moving away’ between the voices can easily be as much as an eight-note (or even more), done as it is at the performer’s discretion.

The second section – with material derived from the aforementioned Three Places – takes a different approach to this inner freedom of tempo, as the chordal coincidence always is to be avoided with no two notes played at the exact same time. The result is that of a constantly varying ‘micro-arpeggio’, within the section’s overall constant tempo.

Duology

By thisisuser on July 16, 2019

for two harps
composed 2019; duration 11 minutes
composed while resident composer at CAPUT Ensemble

Duology highlights in different ways the sonic power and performative diversity of the harp as an instrument with very ancient roots. Based in part on the composition States and Shapes, the strategy is played out differently along the work’s sections. The first section is strictly unified, albeit with the instruments in contrary motion almost constantly. The second section achieves a freedom of tonality in an otherwise very typical performance technique of delicate arpeggios. The third section contrasts the darkest instrumental colors with the fourth sections’ utmost brightness in hard and strident attacks, before the piece ends in tight, rolling movements that alternate between the two harps as they slowly ascend.

States and Shapes

By thisisuser on April 17, 2019

for five clarinets and two harps
composed 2019; duration 19 minutes
world premiere November 2 2019, Reykjavik, Iceland
CAPUT Ensemble, Gudni Franzson – conductor
commissioned by CAPUT Ensemble
commission supported by the Danish Arts Foundation
dedicated to Gudni Franzson

The composition treats the notion that musicality as our appreciation of a sound’s meaning has a biological as well as an evolutionary aspect. This implies an eternal manner of general listening on the one side, and a strictly contemporary manner of culturally bound music appreciation on the other. Such a timeless and self-standing, pre-instrumental sonic make-up is an absolute quality that does not depend on customs and personal aesthetics. In musical terms, it functions outside of personalised musical features as it takes on those wider features that are infinite, innate and unlearned.

To abridge these two fundamentally different listening modes, the instrumentation is set up as two self-similar groups of clarinets and harps that each have an internal micro-cosmos of voices. This constitutes two meta-instruments as the voices move in closely connected dynamics, registers and articulation. The instrumental anonymity in performance blurs the presence of each player, but gains in espressive richness. This meta-identity is complementary between the two groups, where the harps that have matching roles to add short-term and less critical sound features such as transients and spectral features etc. Performance discrepancies do happen, but are specified so that a common, overarching instrument-mass singularity always will prevails.

Musical form is set in four sections in terms of material, albeit in three sections in terms of instrumentation as the clarinets all double, employing a total of five different clarinet types that range from the Ab piccolo clarinet to the Bb contrabass clarinet. The composition was commissioned by the CAPUT Ensemble as part of a composer residency supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, and the composition is dedicated to Gudni Franzson.

Encapsulations

Nebula

Duology

States and Shapes

List of Works

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