Performed by Goska Isphording (harpsichord) and Karlheinz Essl (live-electronics) at NatLab Eindhoven (NL) on 10 Sep 2010.

In this composition, the harpsichord is played in a highly unconventional manner. Except for the end of the piece, no keys are touched. Instead, the sound board and the lowest string of the instrument are excited in different manners. A contact microphone mounted on the sound board acts like an acoustic lense that amplifies sounds that are normally inaudible. The interaction between the harpsichordist and the live-electronics creates a kind of meta-instrument. Its novel sounds and expressions purposely avoid the typical percussive sound of the harpsichord, which is only heard at the end of the piece as a quotation.

By preparing the instrument with a thin nylon thread, sustained "drone" sounds can be produced as an antitheses to the needle-sharp and rapidly decaying harpsichord attacks.

Info: http://www.essl.at/works/sequitur/sequitur-12.html

Info

Sequitur XII (2009) - for harpsichord and live-electronics

Born 1960 in Vienna. Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. Besides writing experimental instrumental music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze°2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition and creates generative sound and video environments. Since 2007 professor of composition for electro-acoustic and experimental music at the University of Music in Vienna.

Karlheinz Essl performs on a laptop computer that he has transformed into a live electronic musical instrument. The result is exciting and musical. You just won't hear these sounds anywhere else. He performs solo and in duets and trios, responding with sensitivity to fellow musicians, producing fascinating sound transformations, creating spontaneous surprises, and moving quickly from loops to cacophony to tiny clips of vocal sounds to all kinds of textures and ideas. He does all this with his m@ze°2(Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment) performance software. (Joel Chadabe, CDeMusic, Januar 2002)


chrisarrell(dot)com
music for throats, fingers, and oscillators 