At the center of my composing lies the idea of considering sound as a material into which one plunges in order to forge its physical and perceptive characteristics: grain, thickness, porosity, luminosity, density and elasticity. Hence it is sculpture of sound, instrumental synthesis, anamorphosis, transformation of the spectral morphology, and a constant drift towards unsustainable densities, distortions and interferences, thanks also to the assistance of electro-acoustic technologies. And increasing importance is given to the sonorities of non-academic derivation and to the sullied, violent sound of a prevalently metallic origin of certain rock and techno music.
Performance Note
One of the main formal characteristics of Trash TV Trance is repetition. Although it is constantly varied, steadily mutated and continually disrupted, realizing the repetitive aspect of this work requires an unusual sense of continuity on essentially two levels: sound and body. Obviously, you need to master the score and be able to realize some complicated passages. For example, measures 70 to 95 involve a developing bass line using the col-legno part of the cello-bow in the right hand while the left hand taps the fingerboard, describing a meticulously notated escalation. This is clearly not only a matter of studying the part and the notes. One has to find the necessary playing stability on the guitar, place the bow within arm’s reach so that the sound will not be interrupted when picking up the bow and find a sound that allows enough sustain for the left hand tapping noises whilst making the bow sound on the sixth string (in this case an overdrive with a considerable output level, not too much distortion and enough high-end could do the job and create the desired flowing polyrhythmic-image). All these parameters should be studied and developed at the same time in order to create a more or less comfortable performance situation.
Mokurai said, “You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together, now show me the sound of one hand.”
Sgorgo Y was written for the left hand of Yaron Deutsch.
Klaus Lang chanson lointaine et douce (2021)
The title, Chanson, is a reference to the rich flourishing of that musical form and its most prominent composers such as Dufay or Ockeghem during the Middle Ages, the epoch that produced the most outstanding and uniquely European forms of art—the Gothic cathedral and polyphonic music. While it is not quoting any specific song, it uses the contrapuntal techniques and the form of the chanson that were developed during that period by those composers. As in their period, I see an artistic structure as a firmly constructed vessel that holds the complex and boundless beauties of sound. In this way chanson lointaine et douce tries to create a wide timeless space of delightful sound that is rich and simple or abundant and restricted at the same time.
Lisa Illean Tiding I (2021)
Tid-ing, to drift with or as if with the tide; to rise and fall like the tide
Tiding is the first in a new collection of pieces dealing with elemental patterns. It is in many ways a line study, with each undulating phrase being both a melodic wave and a swell of sustained tones, accumulating and dissipating across the length of the phrase.
I am very interested in exploring this threshold, where a collection of notes is at once both a line and a sonority. While working, I was reminded how ‘drawing water’ is often a process of drawing many individual lines, which in total—and from a distance—form a visual surface. While my initial sketches for Tiding were for a multilayered piece, working with electric guitar also offered the opportunity to explore closely these ideas in a single line, using a very minimal set-up. To my ears, it is occasionally as if the unadorned lyricism of some early lute music is freshly abstracted in a new medium, and to new ends.
As suggested by the title, the sound floods and ebbs. Transience—in both the production and perception of sound—has always moved me. Growing up, I spent countless evenings and early mornings lying on the beach listening to the ocean, and nearly as many hypnotic hours listening to the world sounding through water, my head half-submerged, in patterns of distant chattering mingling with the periodic rubbing of the sea. This environmental murmurando, effortlessly yet unpredictably floating in and out of perception, is never too far from any work I do with sound.
Like of most of my work, Tiding uses non-tempered tunings. To achieve this, each guitar string is retuned to an overtone of an 11hz ground fundamental: the 6th, 10th, 14th, 21st, 22nd and 25th partials. It took me a long time to find the tunings—the right ‘color’—for this piece. Finding this was important because in a way it is a monochrome piece: each phrase is a subtly different shade of the same hue.
Avshalom Ariel All the boys forgot about you (2018)
All the boys forgot about you was composed for a guitar workshop led by Yaron Deutsch in Darmstadt. Since then, I have only written pop songs. It’s a small piece, an exploration of the ‘other’ (usually silent) side of the electric guitar.
