Based on Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet Op. 43
Performed by Windscape.

Essay For Windquintet (2021)

Codex is a composition inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. His “Codex on the flight of birds”, with its meticulous studies of mechanics, aerodynamics and anatomy, serves as a pretext to create a musical work in which different bird flights are recreated. This 16th-century codex contains detailed notes and drawings on the flight of birds, as well as an analysis of how they maintain balance, move, rotate, descend and ascend during flight. Da Vinci clearly explained two different types of flight: the flight by beating the wings, or propeller flight, and the flight taking advantage of the wind energy, or gliding. Codex researches into these different ways of flight trying to reflect the kinetic energy through music.

CODEX

Lidija Marković, violončelo / cello
Božo Banović, klavir / piano

Recorded in 1988

Sheet music available at https://www.universaledition.com/en/Works/Adagio/P0213607

Adagio za violončelo i klavir / Adagio for Cello and Piano

Music for a short film "Intermission" (1924), (directed by René Clair)
Composer Vladimir Ilyushonok (2020).
Recording from the KINEMO silent film and live music festival (live performance).
The courtyard of the Azgur Museum. Minsk 2021.

FIVE-STORTY ENSEMBLE
Valeria Schupak (piano)
Anastasia Karpenko (violin)
Daria Kurnievskaya (violin)
Vitaly Appow (soprano saxophone)
Eric Orlov-Shimkus (double bass)
Andrey Mikhalevich (trombone)
Vladimir Ilyushonok (percussion)
Anna Semyonova (percussion)

Sound - Andrey Bogdanov.

Link to movie:
https://vimeo.com/580081695

"Entr'acte" (1924) René Clair - (Music for a short film 2020)

eine kleine mondlichtmusik (2022)
für 18 instrumentalisten

KUG ensemble für neue musik / leitung: edo micic
18. mai. 2022, theater im palais, graz

cover painting: zao wou-ki

eine kleine mondlichtmusik (2022)

Performed by the Brazilian Winds Ensemble.
Live recording from October 30, 2022, Theater im Delphi, Berlin

Quaraçá (2022)

Today we live on a planet that is changing fast so drastically that it is becoming more and more challenging to connect with nature. Most of our lives boil down to city life, with a nearby park as the only connection point with nature. Sometimes, however, we still get a chance to see stars in a clear night sky or listen to the twittering of birds while walking in the woods.

The following composition takes its inspiration from all the above; From birdsong, fleeting moments of synchronicity with nature, and the ever-growing dichotomy between nature and humanity. 

Birdsong are particularly important in this piece; In all the soloistic passages, most musical ideas come from the songs of a common nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) and a Kaua'i 'o'o (Moho braccatus). Their songs were adapted to blend in with the musical context in which they appear, but they have remained unchanged in structure and gesture.

Performed by Giancarlo Latta, Hannah Burnett, and Clara Abel
Recorded live at NJIT

Seen from the Sky

The Greek philosopher Eubulides of Miletus is credited with the sophistic argument known as the paradox of the sorites (heap). The most common way it is formulated is as follows: the first grain does not constitute a heap, neither does the second, and so on; thus, either the heap never forms, or if it is accepted that it forms by the addition of a given grain, it must be concluded that it was that single grain that made the heap exist.
The famous Dutch illustrator and engraver Maurits Cornelis Escher was a great master in the graphic representation of various mathematical and logical themes and paradoxes. Metamorphose II, from 1940, is one of his works that best embodies the theme of the paradox of the sorites. This is the work I have chosen to set to music.
When does a polygon stop being a polygon and start being the two-dimensional representation of a lizard, or a fish, or a bird, and vice versa?
If Escher graphically represented this theme, my work has been to transpose it musically.
When does a melody, a timbre, or a key stop being what it is and become something else?
Please, enjoy the listening and viewing experience!

///

This is my latest work, created as the final work of the intensive training course “Screen Music Program”, organized by two pillars of Italian culture: the Accademia Chigiana and Cinecittà.

I thank the tireless @Antonio Artese for his work in coordinating and organizing the course and I thank the teaching staff made up of first-rate members including Patrick Kirst, Lawrence Shragge, Giuseppe Vasapolli, Sarah Belle Reid, Jeff Wolpert.
The masterclasses held by composers of the caliber of Franco Piersanti, Mark Korven, Anna Dubrich, Reinhold Heil were also precious.

Female voices are by the fantastic artist Giorgia Longo
Clarinets are by the incredible Giovanni Vai

Metamorphose II

for Bass Clarinet, Baritone Saxophone and 2 Celli
world premiere januar 8, 2016, Salzburg
Theodor Burkali - bassclarinet
Michael Krenn - baritone saxophone
Peter Sigl - cello
Sebestyen Ludmany - cello

MELOSCAPE

Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982)
www.hstafylakis.com

Never the Same River (2016) 
for orchestra

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Read by the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Felix Mildenberger conducting. Recorded live by Adam Borecki on July 20, 2016 in Harris Hall, Aspen, CO.

World premiere by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Mickelthwate, at the Winnipeg New Music Festival on January 31, 2017 in Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

Score and parts available for rental (PDF or hard copy) through my website: www.hstafylakis.com/contact



Program Notes:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
—Heraclitus

The above aphorism, attributed to pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (quoted by Plato in the dialogue Cratylus), expresses a view of the universe as being in a constant state of change. A musical analogue to this concept of impermanence is the chaconne, a Baroque form wherein a constantly repeating pattern (e.g. harmonic progression, bass line, etc.) provides a foundation for a process of continuous variation, decoration, figuration, and melodic invention. 

Never the Same River is a texture-based composition that attempts to embody Heraclitus’s philosophy of simultaneous constancy and flux. The work is propelled by a 26-note melody that outlines a perpetually-repeating harmonic progression, serving as the chaconne theme. First presented by the harp and percussion, the theme serves as a vehicle for the gradual textural development of the musical surface. The orchestra slowly emerges as captured harmonic resonances of the harp and percussion theme accumulate and gradually take over the texture. 

Throughout the work, the instruments of the orchestra act as semi-independent musical streams whose ever-shifting interactions conspire to effectuate a large-scale rhythmic, melodic, articulative, registral, and dynamic intensification. At the peak of this textural crescendo, the music buckles under its own weight and breaks off into disconnected fragments that struggle to rekindle the musical flow in fits and starts. Although the chaconne theme has been looping almost continuously, as the music winds down to its calm conclusion there is a sense of having traversed a great distance.
— HS

www.hstafylakis.com

Never the Same River (orchestra)

Never the Same River (2016) for orchestra

bazss_2.0 is the fourth in a series of pieces focused on the use of a bass. The bazss series began in 2002 and resulted in a fixed media electroacoustic piece. Since that time the source material has been used in a number of my works. At this stage of the bazss series, the piece that resulted was a live interactive work involving a performer and real-time computer processing.

bazss_2.0 is a structured improvisation. The performer is given a series of cells and can perform the cells or just use the cells as inspiration for performance. This piece is the result of various spectral-based processing techniques. At the core of the work is some basic cross-synthesis. In one section of the piece a variety of oscillator banks are crossed with the sound of the bass drum. The computer can analyze amplitude and frequency information from the bass drum and this information can then be used to control and playback the oscillators. Another section of the piece uses recordings of a poet, riffing on the word bass, and is crossed with spectral information derived from the analysis of the bass drum.

This piece was written for Dr. Julie Licata. She was involved in every step of the composition process and her insight into performance techniques and improvisation were key in the development of this work.

This is a recording of Patti Cudd performing bazss_2.0 on March 27, 2013 in the SUNY Buffalo - Center for the Arts - Black Box Theatre.

bazss_2.0

Any physical manifestation underlies the movement. The existence of music, a favorite field of my personal research, underlies the movement.  Starting from the assumption that art forms always interpenetrate, and even complement each other when they border and cross over into apparently remote areas, I have strongly dedicated myself to investigating the inextricable relationship between music and movement.  To do this, I create installations, videos and digital interactive works that reveal relationships between objects that belong to different systems. I try to make the invisible visible, as someone said.

Metamorphose II

Antonello Tosto

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