This piece was written for David Nunez who asked that it be no longer than 1 minute. I wrote it in 2021 for him, making use of his beautiful deep voice.

INVOCATION (POUR VIOLON ET VOIX) - NORMALIZED

"Textures Turbulentes, Formes Emergentes (String Quartet N° 4)", was commissioned by the Sonar Quartet with funds provided by the Ernst Von Siemens Foundation.  Here is the world premiere performance by the Sonar Quartett played on December 11th, 2016 at the Kunst Akademie in Berlin as part of the quartet's UPTOPIE series of 7 concerts. Live electronics were programmed by Stefan Tiedje with performance by Stefan Tiedje, Daniel Weinstein and Gerard Pape.

"Textures Turbulentes, Formes Emergentes (String Quartet N°4)"

for piano solo (hommage Scelsi)(~5')
Performer: Alexey Shmurak

The piece for piano is dedicated to G. Scelsi. "From..." is the first part of an idea about paths-from-through-over... The world premiere was in Kiev, Ukraine. The Russian premiere was in Saint-Petersburg in 2008. 

Olga Krashenko: From (2007)

for cello solo (~9')
Performer: Rohan de Saram
 
Recorded: live at the Eclat Festival in Stuttgart, Germany
 
The title of this piece in French means the "birth of sound." It is dedicated "In Memoriam Iannis Xenakis". In this work, sound is born from rhythm and time. The piece starts with gradually accelerating pulsations of un-pitched noise. Only over the whole work are the other aspects of sound introduced: timbre, intensity, pitch. The birth of sound requires time. In this piece, time, or tempo, is speeding up and slowing down all the way through. There is no constant tempo, meter, or measure length. Sometimes a very rapid rhythm is happening in a very short duration. This is physically when rhythm starts to turn into continuous sound.

As the piece goes on, the durations of the measures are getting longer and longer as time (tempo) is slowing down. There is one measure, for example, that lasts one minute towards the end. Paradoxically, even though time is slowing down, the density of rhythmic activity is no less. It is as though we are putting a microscope on the inner life of the sound and we are hearing in slow motion rhythms that are normally too fast to hear. For example, in the last section of the piece, we hear slowly oscillating micro-tonal pitch/intensity patterns (micro-detuned double stops in sixteenths of tones with variable accentuations) that represent what timbres, or waveforms, really are: rhythmical oscillations of extremely rapid micro-intensity variations that we hear as continuous sound that has a resultant timbre / intensity, with sometimes a steady pitch, as well. Thus, time links rhythm together with pitch, timbre and intensity, which together make up sound. Pulsations inside the sound create cycles of rhythm. Rhythmic cycles of pitch, intensity and timbre, as a function of time, allows sound to be born."La Naissance du Son" was commissioned by the Texas Eye and Ear Festival and premiered in that festival in Austin, Texas in September 2002 by Rohan de Saram within a Pape monographic concert played by the Arditti String Quartet.

Gerard Pape: La Naissance du Son (2002)

for violin solo (~2,5')
 
Performer: Michail Krutik
 
The piece for violin solo is constructed on the sliding intonations-emotions of "question" and "answer" which then become mixed into complete noise... Is it possible to open one more door in ourselves ?..What will one find behind light illusions-discoveries ?... The world premiere was in Saint-Petersburg in 2010. The world premiere of the version with viola took place in Paris in November 2009 with Maurizio Barbetti (viola) 

Olga Krashenko: Interior Dialogue (2009)

for ensemble (picc., cl., vn., va., vc)(~3')
 
The translation of the title (approximately) is "Field not field". It is a reference to Russian folklore and expresses an admiration for the infinity of space. It's also possible that what is being evoked musically and poetically is not a spatial field at all, but our soul of love...The piece was written especially for the Paris based ensemble "Alternance". 

Olga Krashenko:  Pole ne pole (2010)

for three sopranos (~25')
 
The composition represents the mixture of three different ways of singing - a kind of folkloric singing, including special speaking which is close to the reciting of fairy tales, "electronic" singing which imitates all kinds of electronic sounds and effects, and "baby singing" where the performer sings in a manner that is meant to evoke Lacan's "lalangue" and which also imitates crying and other sounds of babies. The musical development is limited by a very narrow pitch range which creates a feeling of line. The text of the song comes from the novel of Olga Krashenko "Person without name". The fragment from the novel that was used can be found on the web page "Writings". 

Olga Krashenko: Song-Line (2010)

for bass voice solo and 9 bass flutes (~8')

Performer: Nicholas Isherwood and Orchestre de Flutes Francaises

Noirval was written in the month of July 2007. The piece was written for bass voice solo and 9 bass flutes. Why did I choose these timbre colours so somber, so black? The work is a portrait in sound of the very great poet Gerard Nerval. The bass voice sings a poem that is very emblematic of Nerval, "El Desdichado", the first poem of his great cycle "Les Chimeres".Nerval was a very great poet, but he suffered terribly from melancholia, also known as psychotic depression.

Gerard Pape: Noirval (2007)

for 4 solo voices and two mixed choirs (~8')

Performers:ensemble VoxNova
 
Battle is a dramatic musical scene taken from Weaveworld, famous novel of Clive Barker written in 1987. The general idea of this dramatic scene is the struggle to reconcile discontinuity and continuity, disorder and order. It is not a question of one destroying the other but of their co-existence at the end of the piece in the form of chaos, a structure that is at the same time orderly and disorderly.

The macro-form of this piece was inspired by the scientific studies of the passage from order to disorder to chaos in nature (Period 3 implies Chaos). In the novel, Immacolata (the black Madonna), Shadwell (the evil salesman who aids her) and the Byblows (the monstrous children of Immacolata's sister) represent the forces of discontinuity, disorder, hate and materialism who wish to destroy the Weaveworld. On the other hand, the Seerkind (supernatural entities with magic powers taken from the Garden of Eden), Suzanna and her lover Cal (the guardians of the living carpet, Weaveworld, where the Seerkind hide) represent the forces of continuity, order, love and imagination. In Battle, Cal sings three times a hymn to love and imagination: "Though life itself is but a wilderness of dust, the love true lovers imagine need never be lost."

Battle is orchestrated for 4 solo voices: Suzanna (lyric soprano), Cal (tenor), Shadwell (bass), Immacolata (coloratura) and two mixed choirs (Seerkind and Byblows). The two choirs have been pre-recorded and spatialized onto multi-channel tape. The macro-form of the piece is broken into 14 short sequences where the two antithetical worlds confront each other in sound before the climactic 15th sequence, which terminates in their co-existence in the form of chaos. Battle was commissioned by Nicholas Isherwood and his ensemble VoxNova with the financial aid of the CNAT (National Center for Art and Technology) of the city of Reims. It is dedicated to Nicholas Isherwood and to VoxNova.


Gerard Pape: Battle (1996)

for trombone and 8 channel tape (10')
 
Performer: John Kenny

Gerard Pape: Makbenach IV (1998-2007)

for bass voice and ensemble (~10')
 
Performers: Lionel Arnaud (conductor), Nicholas Isherwood (bass), Atelier de Musique Contemporaine du CNR de Versailles: Miraka Nasu (flute), Louis Hedde (oboe), Krista Martynes (clarinet), Alexandre Ouzounoff (bassoon), François Pallies (trumpet), Isabelle Varraux (horn), Hiroyuki Morooka (trombone), Pierre Lacroix (percussion), Takuro Ikezawa et Violaine Reboul (violins), Estelle Marsal (viola), Floraine Vieux-Rochas (cello), Hui-ying Yang (contrabass)
 
Recording: world premiere, March 26, 2004 at Versailles
 
This prologue is an excerpt from my opera, "Weaveworld" which remains a "work in progress". In the "Prologue", Gluck, sung here by Nicholas Isherwood, announces the theme of the opera: the idea of little worlds within big worlds, little loops of time within big loops. Despite the fractal quality of the world and of time, nothing is fixed. Thus, the music of the "Prologue" is a mirror image of these ideas. Like much of my music, this is chaotic music of great density where small changes of pitch, intensity and timbre happen within cycles of time that are small and large at the same time. This is very slow, yet very active music, nonetheless.

Gerard Pape: Weaveworld Prologue (1998)

ARTAUD, LE MOMO (musique théâtre éléctro-acoustique pour violoniste/vocaliste et bande 8 pistes)
ARTAUD, the MOMO (electro-acoustic music theater for violinist/vocalist and 8 channel tape)
texte: Antonin Artaud
text:   Antonin Artaud

Voici, la partie bande huit-pistes intégrale mixée en stéréo:
Here is the complete 8 channel tape part mixed down to stereo:
1) Le retour d'Artaud, le Mômo (18')
1) The return of Artaud the Momo (18')
silence (1 minute)
2)Centre Mère et Patron-Minet (3'15")
2)Mother-Center and Boss-Pussy (3'15")
silence (1 minute)
3) Insulte à l'inconditionné (3'30")
3)Insult to the Unconditioned (3'30")
silence (1 minute)
4) L'Exécration du Père-Mère (12')
4) The Execration of the Father-Mother(12')
silence (1 minute)
5) Aliénation et Magie Noire (7')
Madness and Black Magic(7')

ARTAUD, LE MOMO

Official soundcloud account of Gerard Pape and Olga Krashenko.

Pape/Krashenko

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