Feu de Joie was written for bassoonist Shannon Peet and is an homage to the bassoon and its wonderful sound. I had always wanted to write for bassoon, but since my primary interest in writing is to hear what happens when notes are combined, I didn’t want to write a solo piece for just one line of music, so I wrote Feu de Joie for six taped bassoons and one live bassoon (the concert format). The six taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. This is the first piece that I wrote for multiples in which I couldn’t play the instrument; it is also the first piece I wrote using my computer. This is no coincidence; I was able to write very specifically for the bassoon’s sound after I did a series of studies using a programmed bassoon sound that matched the real sound very closely, so I was able to hear what was going to happen without having a performer’s specific knowledge. The taped bassoons combine to create a sound that exploits the unique qualities of the bassoon, creating combination and interference tones. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote occurred naturally before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created others. So, in effect, the nature of the bassoon and its natural sound determined the direction of the piece. The solo part starts off by playing dissonant tones and then picks out notes that are being heard on the tape, continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped bassoons.

Feu De Joie

MARY JANE LEACH is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities: “an acoustic Through the Looking Glass world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker).

Feu De Joie

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