'Light Cloud, Dark Cloud. D'après Rothko'
for clarinet and orchestra
(2019)
Commissioned by Orchestra della Toscana with the support of the project 'SIAE CLASSICI D'OGGI'

Premiered on April 8, 2021 (streaming concert)
Live recorded in Florence with Orchestra della Toscana conducted by Jader Bignamini. 
Soloist: Marco Ortolani

© Marco Borrelli - Fondazione ORT

Light Cloud, Dark Cloud. D'après Rothko (clarinet and orchestra)

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)

'Scratching memories' - for solo piano. 
Performed by Anna D'Errico. 

A work exploring resonance, friction, and grain — the tactile and fragile persistence of sound.

Scratching memories was commissionned by the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, for the project Saiten-Tasten, Innenraumstudien für das andere Klavier (touching strings, studies for inside piano techniques) by Mathilde Hoursiangou, kindly supported by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and the SKE/Fonds austro mechana.

Scratching memories

For Accordion, Electric Guitar, Piano, 2 Percussionists, Cello and 2 Double Basses. 
Recording performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik. 
Commissioned by WDR (Cologne) for Musikfabrik
First performed 1 December 1999 in Funkhaus Wallrafplatz, Cologne, by Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Stefan Asbury.

View score - 
https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep_7525__rebecca_saunders__dichroic_c50e3bfee5851b

Rebecca Saunders: Quartet / Into The Blue / Molly's Song 3 - Shades Of Crimson / Dichroic Seventeen

Dichroic Seventeen (1998)

Concerto for Violin Solo and Orchestra

Recording performed by ORF Wien Modern, Carolin Widmann and Sylvain Camberling

First performed at Darmstadt Summer Course 14. August 2016, Radial System Berlin and Weimar Festspiel by Carolin Widmann, Sylvain Cambreling, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and dancers from Sasha Waltz and Guests. 
Choreography by Antonio Rúz.

https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep_12015r__rebecca_saunders__still_

Still (2011)

For Soprano and Ensemble
Recording performed by Juliet Fraser and Klangforum Wien, conducted by Bas Wiegers.
Commissioned by SWR, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Casa da Musica Porto. 
First performed by Juliet Fraser and Klangforum Wien, conducted by Titus Engel at Donaueschingen Musiktage, 14 October 2016.

View score - 
https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep14188_online

Skin (2015-16)

For Two Double Basses
Recording performed by Corin Long and Michael Tiepold.
Commissioned by Konzerthaus Dortmund
First Performed 17 February 2006, in Konzerthaus Dortmund, by Corin Long and Michael Tiepold.

Blue And Gray (2005)

Concerto for Violoncello, Strings and Percussion.
First performed and recorded 17 November 2012 at St Pauls Hall at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, by Jean Guihen Queyras (vc), Ensemble Resonanz, conducted by Peter Rundel

View score - 
https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep_12734r__rebecca_saunders__ire__c

Ire (2012)

for Solo Cello
Recording performed by Séverine Ballon
Commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with funds from Diaphonique/Franco-British Fund for Contemporary Music, Südwestrundfunk & Fundación BBVA Bilbao
First performed 19 November 2013, St. Pauls Hall, hcmf//, by Séverine Ballon

Solitude (2013)

for Percussion Duo and Orchestra.
Recording performed by Christian Dierstein, Dirk Rothbrust and the Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Enno Poppe at Ultraschall Berlin, January 2018.
Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Wien Modern
First performed 10 May 2014, Witten Days for new Chamber Music Festival, by Christian Dierstein, Dirk Rothbrust and the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Rundell

View score -  https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/ep_14042_saunders_void_score_pcl

Void (2013-14)

For Trumpet, Piano, Harp and Cello
Recording performed by Musikfabrik, conducted by Diego Masson

First performed by Ensemble of the Musikhochschule conducted by Zsolt Nagy at Velte Saal, Musikhochschule, Karlsruhe, 10 February 1992

Scratching memories

Daniela Terranova

Related tracks