2 Dec 2017 premiere at WHS Teatteri Union, Helsinki
defunensemble

Hanna Kinnunen, bass flute
Mikko Raasakka, bass clarinet
Lily-Marlene Puusepp, harp
Emil Holmström, piano and sampler
Markus Hohti, cello
Timo Kurkikangas, electronics
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(seepings) is a piece about integration, about belonging, about and within the lived materiality of recorded music.

dedicated to (and commissioned by) defunensemble.

© 2017 Jarkko Hartikainen


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(seepings) (2017) for ensemble and sampler
commissioned and premiered by, and dedicated to, defunensemble (Helsinki, Finland, EU)

Since I identify as a huge music nerd who seems to have an actively hypersensitive creative brain regarding sonic phenomena, associations to existing music often disrupt my creative work flow that strives for freshness and new contexts in a concentrated acoustic listening environment. In (seepings) (2017), which began as an inquiry into finding a personal relationship with ‘the electroacoustic’, I let such echoes of certain unescapable past influences seep through rather concretely – using ‘their’ instrument, the loudspeaker.

From a half-second of recorded music, the human brain is typically capable of recognizing only the genre and the decade (if even that), according to scientific studies in mental chronometry. This is naturally relative to the listener’s personal experiences with music(s), yet there exists a certain biological hard limit where we are able to listen to specific sounds with utmost concentration yet can’t recognize them as individual artistic expressions but rather as representations of larger musico-cultural contexts.

We may even repeatedly misrecognize the agency behind a short enough audio snippet with someone else using the same instruments, technology, etc. Then again, a shared pitch or chord (or a compositional logic that makes several very short impulses form one melody or scale) may make otherwise unrelated samples appear as an original work of a third party. I have studied the complexity and the edges of this psychological phenomenon with deliberate artistic research into the materiality of short samples of certain personally influential musical sounds: how they react to each other in different durations, proximities, and compositions in general.

© 2018 Jarkko Hartikainen

(seepings) (2017) for ensemble and sampler [bootleg]

www.jarkkohartikainen.net
sheet music: core.musicfinland.fi/composers/jarkko-hartikainen

Jarkko Hartikainen is a composer striving to create works that explore what music is and could still be, researching the possibilities in sound through rigorous performer-collaboration as well as studying findings in a plethora of disciplines. Stimulating acoustic phenomena, exciting sonorities and concrete, bodily impulses through rhythm, resonance and empathy fuel his often extremely instrument-specific, concentrated writing. Currently Hartikainen is working as a commission-based freelance composer, as well as pursuing his D.Mus degree at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Eriikka Maalismaa, defunensemble, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Ensemble Adapter and other such distinguished performers have recently promoted his work.