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)

Sätze - Wörter - Zeichen (2022)-E-Mex Ensemble- #Tonedmelisma MusikFestival

cantata for vocal ensemble, instrmental ensemble, trio concertante

MATRA

Matra IV

Trio Sonemus
Azra Ramic, Bass Clarinet
Esther Saladin, Cello
Gilles Grimaître, Piano

live recording, High Noon 2000 Musik, Konstanz (DE)

www.oscarbianchi.com

Antilope

dep . R(i)e . viv . al . a . tion (2019)
for ensemble

March 10, 2019, performed by Hezarfen Ensemble in Bilkent Concert Hall, Ankara

Orhun Orhon, conductor
Cem Önertürk - Flute
Kıvanç Fındıklı - Bass Clarinet
Kerem Öktem - Percussion
Müge Hendekli - Piano
Özcan Ulucan - Violin
Ulrich Mertin - Viola
Gökhan Bağcı - Violoncello

Recording and mastering by Engin Dağlık

Art: Limm by Christoph Bader
 
dep . R(i)e . viv . al . a . tion (2019) for ensemble

"unhappy that i am, i cannot heave 
my heart into my mouth: i love your majesty 
according to my bond; nor more nor less."
			King Lear, I.1: 91-93, Cordelia.

dep . R(i)e . viv . al . a . tion, is an artificial word that was created as considering the phonetic features of both deprivation and revival words.
Just like King Lear's little daughter, Cordelia, many people have organic bonds of pure love. The most bitter of this situation is that they cannot leave these ties behind, and over time they become a cyclic deprivation. These types of situations that cannot be left behind and are transformed again, avoiding the progression of the timeline which creates loops. The deprivations that occur in these repeated cycles with particular or unknown periods inform their endings; in fact, every ending is the cause of a new revival. As Shams- i Tabriz says, ’The end is to return to the beginning.’ 
I have observed that this psychological process, which people have to experience from time to time, has an actual physical reaction on our own bodies. The harmonic cycle of music refers to the psychological process; the music, beginning in the “E” harmonic area, that completes its harmonic cycle by achieving different center tones and ends at the “E” center just like in the beginning. The harmonic function of music also serves the formal structure of itself. Transformed small structures texturally reach up in each center tone during the procedure, which is a reflection of the observed physical results.

dep . R(i)e . viv . al . a . tion

voce rotta for flute and piano, Ensemble U: Tarmo Johannes, Taavi Kerikmae, Tallinn, March 19, 2019

Spektral Quartet

Clara Lyon, violin I
Maeve Feinberg, violin II
Doyle Armbrust, viola
Russell Rolen, cello

String Quartet

"Freiheitsblau auf der Leinwand" von leander ruprecht

Mitschnitt der UA im Konzertsaal 3 der ZHdK am 16.1.2020

Ensemble Arc-en ciel
unter der Leitung von William Blank

Freiheitsblau auf der Leinwand

premiered by Oerknal Ensemble at Bilkent Concert Hall October 23, 2019. 

Gregory Charette, conductor
Susanne Peters, flute
Daniel Boeke, bass clarinet
Christian Smith, percussion
Sophie Patey, piano
Jellantsje de Vries, violin
René van Munster, cello

Mastering: Deniz Aslan

Palimpsest

-s k ä j b s! 2.1 for large ensemble
Performed by Ensemble Arc-en-Ciel.
Conductor: William Blank
Mix & Mastering: Samuel Müller

Zürich, January 2020

-s k ä j b s! 2.1 for large ensemble

[Work commissioned Hong Kong Composers' Guild ]
Date: 19th Jan 2021
Venue: S'way Music Studio
Performer: Solo Pipa | Mavis Lam

“Barred Autumn” for solo pipa, was introduced and played by pipa-ist Mavis Lam during the Contemporary Music Appreciation Workshop on 19th January 2021.

The workshop “Decoding Creativity: Interactive Platform for Contemporary Music Appreciation” is presented by Hong Kong Composers’ Guild and launched by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

-s k ä j b s! 2.1 for large ensemble

Canberk Duman

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