for recordings of satellites, string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou April 18th 2021
Quatuor Diotima

**********************

Achille Judica-Cordiglia and his brother Giovanni Battista are well-known amateur radio operators who claimed in the late fifties and early sixties to have heard radio communications taken from secret Soviet Union space missions, including SOS signals, telemetry, and the dying sounds (heartbeats and breathing) of a suffocating "lost cosmonaut.” Even though their claims have been thoroughly debunked, the stories of these sensational intercepts are part of the mythology of the Space Age and stand at the origin of a durable conspiracy theory.
In the 1960s, the idea of a “lost cosmonaut” spoke to acute fears. Despite the optimism of space exploration tales, the reality of space travel—from sending a dog into orbit to putting a man on the moon—had a striking effect on the public and raised more life-altering questions than it provided answers. A cosmonaut lost in space served as a poignant metaphor for individuals’ anxieties about the future in an era of nuclear tension and uncertainty. This helps to explain the diffusion and the longevity of a hoax that identified the stain of some kind of original sin on the shiny surface of the triumphs of the early space age. Now that the cosmos has switched in our imaginations from being the route toward a radiant future for humanity to a place of accumulation for space capitalism or a post-doomsday shelter for the extremely rich, these stories of dead astronauts are more sinister and haunting than ever.

The title "Memories of the Space Age" is borrowed from the collection of stories of the same name by J.G. Ballard (1988), a set of writings thematically linked around rotting launch gantries at Cape Canaveral, the failure of the US space program, dead astronauts eternally orbiting in space, deserted hotels lining the Florida coast, and the lonely, disturbed individuals who linger at the fringes of this lost dream of the Space Age.

The piece uses more than 100 historical radio recordings of human-made objects gravitating in Low Earth Orbit, for example, the beacon beeps of satellites, telemetries, and the voices of cosmonauts, along with the ill-famed Judica-Cordiglia tapes. This material—shifted and transposed to match the harmonic structure of the piece—is the starting point for an imitation game that involves the string quartet and that grows into a complex three-layered polyphony.

In addition to these archival materials, the electronic material features digital processing of the string instruments with the modulation techniques that were, and still are, commonly used for radio and television transmission. The fragile, inharmonic sonorities of the prepared strings are mirrored by electronic phenomena like feedbacks or physically-modeled chaotic circuits that behave in similarly erratic ways, in a laborious attempt to tame the untamable while at the same time pursuing serendipitous glitches.

"Memories of the Space Age" deals with the aesthetics of ground noise, white noise, and lost radio waves, with the misuse and malfunctions of technology, and with the misinterpretation of a chaotic signal as pareidolia. It is also, somehow, a nostalgic homage to obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies and to the visions of the future these technologies carried. That future now seems irretrievably lost, but its ghost, like Ballard’s dead astronauts, still haunts us.

Mauro Lanza - "Memories of the Space Age" (2020)

Premiere 12. 11. 2023

Nürnberg, Villa Treepe
Piano - Anne-Kathrein Jordan

Beta Lyrae

CATHEDRALE-LUMIERE (11’45’’) 2013
For saxophone quartet (SATB)
Premiered on November 29 at La Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur, Montréal by QUASAR, saxophone quartet.
Dedicated to QUASAR saxophone quartet

For the visual artist Carole Simmard-Laflamme, The Cathedral Dress thus crystallizes the traces of significant moments in life. It carries within it cultures and civilizations. The fabric recovered to create the works becomes the memory-material of men and women participating in a collective and multicultural installation in the very image of humanity.
Inspired by the architectural aspect of The Cathedral Dress as well as by the symbolic richness and singularity of the materials that compose it, we composed this piece based on the idea of weaving a complex sound space. Research has thus been focused on the design of the processes of transformation, metamorphosis, interpolation of materials: timbre, texture, density, friction, tearing, colors, fusion, diffraction, reflection of light and sound, vibration, shattering, dazzling.
Divided into two main parts: Cathedral-Light and Cathedral Dress, the piece is structured into twelve moments that symbolize the twelve periods of Simard-Laflamme's work.

Cathédrale-Lumière

la poétesse et sa flute: monolouge. varations (2023)
for solo female voice (9')
Helēna Sorokina, contralto/mezzo-soprano

13.12.2023
Universalmuseum Johanneum
Graz
Austria
recorded by Carlos Gonzales Bolanos

la poétesse et sa flute: monolouge. varations was commissioned by and composed for Helēna Sorokina. The premiere was given on October 5h 2023 in Graz, during the ARTikulationen festival of Artistic Research and
is heartily dedicated to Esaias Järnegard, a great composer and friend.

la poétesse et sa flute: monologue. variations is a piece that stands between music and theatre field.
It is heavily based on A’s monologue found in Sarah Kanes Crave.
Along with this monologue, a text by the composer is used as well.
Both texts are provided below.
The composer’s work investigates the borders between theatrical and musical performance.
The soloist is seen as a modern version of a rhapsodist; singing (mezzo soprano) and reciting (poetess) are the main actions, while a third (flute) is also applied. These actions call for different ways of interpretation and different techniques to shape the voice accordingly.

Sarah Kane - Crave
A: Don’t say no to me you can't say no to me because it's such a
relief to have loved again and to lie in a bed and be held and
touched and kissed and adored and your heart will leap when
you hear my voice and see my smile and feel my breath on your
neck and your heart will race when I want to see you and I will
lie to you from day one and use you and screw you and break
your heart because you broke mine first and you will love me
more each day until the weight is unbearable and your life is
mine and you'll die alone because I will take what I want then
walk away and owe you nothing it's always there it's always
been there and you cannot deny the life you feel fuck that life
fuck that life fuck that life I have lost you now.

Zesses Seglias - Tombeau
My desire is reflected on you
You are the other me.
I exist not without you.
I am my desire.
But I am not what I want.
I try to sleep
Sleep is another state of my desire.
The reflection is absorbed.
The mirror is shut.
The dream is on

Zesses Seglias_la poétesse et sa flute: monologue. variations for solo voice

"Disiecta Membra" (2014)
for six voices

Live Recording 
February 5th 2015 
Festival ECLAT Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Neue Vocalsolisten

Disiecta Membra, latin for “scattered fragments” is an expression used to refer to surviving fragments of ancient poetry, manuscripts and other literary or cultural objects, but can also literally means "scattered limbs" or "scattered members". 
The membra this piece is dealing with are the different cuts of Grunnius Cocotta, the imaginary pig whose last wills are summoned in the Testamentum Porcelli, a parodic middle-age text. The short excerpt of this text that I decided to use is an inventory of twelve body parts that the pig, right before being slaughtered, bequeaths to twelve categories of will beneficiaries.

Et de meis visceribus dabo donabo sutoribus saetas, 
rixoribus capitinas, 
surdis auriculas, 
causidicis et verbosis linguam, 
bubulariis intestina, 
isiciariis femora, 
mulieribus lumbulos, 
pueris vesicam, 
puellis caudam, 
cinaedis musculos, 
cursoribus et venatoribus talos, 
latronibus ungulas

[And from my body I shall give and contribute to the cobblers my bristles, to quarrelers my head-parts, to the deaf my ears, to lawyers and the wordy my tongue, to sausage-makers my intestines, to makers of meat products my thighs, to women my little loins, to boys my bladder, to girls my tail, to poofters my muscles, to runners and hunters my ankles, to brigands my hooves]
	
One can easily draw a comparison between this parodic list and the amass of dismembered bodies of saints that (still) populate catholic churches all around Europe. 
Mikhail Bakhtin in his “Rabelais and his time” elaborated the concept of grotesque body and wrote extensively about these holy remains: 

"At the time of Rabelais ridicule relics were quite common, especially, of course, in the Protestant satire […]
Dismembered body of the saint in medieval literature has repeatedly given rise to grotesque images, and transfers. In one of the best medieval parody travesties - in "Treatise Garcia" (1099), the hero, a wealthy Simonist archbishop of Toledo, brings to Rome as a gift the miraculous relics of holy martyrs Rufus and Albina […] "… from the kidneys Albina, from the innards Rufina, from the stomach, from the back, from the backside, from the edges of chest from the legs, the hands, from the neck. What else? - From all the members of both bodies of the martyrs. " We see that already in the XI century relics gave rise to a purely grotesque anatomy of the dismembered body"

While the catalog of pig cuts of the Testamentum has a direct influence on the form of the piece - which is indeed a catalog of short pieces, each related to a different body part -, this reference to relics is suggested by the use of several musical quotations issued from Membra Jesu Nostri, the famous set of seven cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude, which is also a catalog of limbs: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. Curiously enough, what is considered to be the first Lutheran oratorio has the form of a massive immaterial reliquary for a body that left no material remains. 

The contrast between this longing for the absent flesh and the carnavalesque exuberance of the Testamentum was the basic source of inspiration for the composition of Disiecta Membra. 


Mauro Lanza - "Disiecta Membra" (2014)

A sneak preview of two movements from the forthcoming release on Kairos in May 2017.

Recorded at City University with Mark Knoop (piano); mixed and mastered by Newton Armstrong.

XXI. Hotel

Dieter Schnebel: Maulwerke (1968-74)
a short audio sample from the newest version of this piece developed by the ensemble (Ariane Jessulat, Christian Kesten, Miachel Hirsch, Henrik Kairies, Kataria Rasinski, Steffi Weismann)



Schnebel: Maulwerke (Version 2010)

SEGEL for orchestra (2016-17)

Piece for solo violoncello, soprano and electronics. Commissioned by the CIRM, National Center for Musical Creation in Nice. Performance: BETH ROOT SANDVOSS, violoncello and LAURA HYNES, soprano.
Rozsa Centre, University of Calgary, Canada.

New Voices, New Directions

Spleen

 ANALIA LLUGDAR
Analía Llugdar is a Canadian/Argentine composer who is currently based in Montréal, Canada. She studied piano and composition at Cordoba National University, Argentina. She continued her composition studies at University of Montréal, where she completed a Master with José Evangelista and a PhD in Music composition with Denis Gougeon. 

She has received several awards for her work, including First Prize in the chamber music category of the CBC Radio National Competition for Young Composers, the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada Award and the Grand Prix of the Canada Council for the Arts. Also, she has received the Contemporary Music Québec-Flandres Prize 2007, the Jules Léger Prize 2008, the “Prix Opus du compositeur de l’année 08/09 du Conseil quebecois de la musique” and recently the Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton prize of the of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Several of her works were performed at festivals including Montréal Nouvelle Musique (MNM), Conference of Contemporary Music (Brussel), the International Society of Contemporary Music Concerts (Flandres), Biennal Musique en Scène 2008 (Lyon), Royaumont Voix Nouvelles (France), Domaine Forget (Quebec), The 2008 Cornerstone Festival (Liverpool), Huddersfield New Music Festival (Huddersfield, UK), Presences China Concerts 2009 (Shanghai), TRANSIT festival in Belgium, Cervantino in Mexico,  MANCA in Nice etc.


Cathédrale-Lumière

Analia Llugdar

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