Tedde/Moosbrugger/Castine-COMING SOON

Tracks:
1 - Giorgio Tedde: Diapathos (WP)
2 - Alexander Moosbrugger: Fonds, Schach, Basar (WP)
3 - Peter Castine: Bits and Pieces op. 122 (SEA)

 

The ensemble piece Diapathos, by Giorgio Tedde, was commissioned for Ensemble Phoenix Basel. “Through the Pathos”, different states of mind, various emotions and effects inspire the composer and divide the piece into several parts: courage, pain, fear, bad, and beautiful.

Several short cries are embedded throughout the piece as a kind of semantic framework (“Rage!”, “It hurts!”, or “Wonderful!”), each of which underlines the respective range of of impressions within its musical context.

From the loud and explosive opening of the piece, to the over-shadowed aching, or the “What is that!?” of the “Fear” section, the piece glides directly and without warning into the “Beautiful”, only to smother itself in the end by taking it too far with the muttered affirmation: “Eerily beautiful!”.

Fonds, Schah, Basar, by the Austrian composer and organist Alexander Moosbrugger, takes inspiration from the Paragone: pondering and answering questions regarding temperament / intonation, visual media and the acoustic counterpart (sound media), as well as syntonics / color balance. This piece works compositionally on several plateaus. For example, a chess-match from 1972 between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasskij has been sketched into the piece and the final outcome of the match is interwoven with two passages from Francesco Colonnas “Hypernotomachia Poliphili” (1499). The spacial dimensions (illustrated excessively in the book) are transcribed into intervals and derived into four respective systems of intonation: architectural dimensions, as described in Colonna's book; meantone temperament with 19 keys per octave; 12 semitones per octave (each tuned in perfect fifths to the 'C' overtone series up to the 19th partial); and finally a quarter-tone series (also not equal tempered but tuned in perfect intervals between the 33rd and 63rd overtone). Additionally, the sextet (or optional septet) integrates a “Beforehand” and an “In-between” as an auditory rendezvous, in which the audience can regroup before the concert, producing calm and concentration (as the essential vessel for sound), and finally the performers “intone” the music. Situations like this would be rearranged to become the theme of a set of variations upon “Silence before” or “Followed by silence” in a piano recital  and edited in on some vinyl recordings (special releases). Such samples from vinyl recordings are played at certain points throughout the piece.

In the composition Bits and Pieces (1979), by the Berlin-based American composer Peter Castine, for flute, guitar, percussion, and piano, the composer was interested in creating music for four instruments from the smallest and simplest elements possible. The motives consist mostly of just two or three intervals or rhythmic units. Through regularly changing instrumental arrangements and combinations, an atmospheric music emerges (even ethereal at times, despite sometimes becoming nearly brutal). The composition consists of seven movements (the “Pieces”), which are also built from many tiny musical elements, or “Bits”.

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