a real pleasure to listen to it every time

This is a piece written for my exams in the class of electroacoustic composition during the spring semester of '21.

In this piece I tried to manipulate sound using limited sound sources, specifically Iron (Ferrum) and Human Voices (Voces). The idea being that small or massive pieces of Iron and their attacks or resonances serve as an instrument and the voices only add to that sound rather than giving a whole meaning to the composition. Despite these two main sound sources some sine waves are also being used.


| Featured at HELMCA, Days of Electroacoustic Music 2021


Photo by: Elli Lymperopoulou

Ferrum Voces

The shape of this piece emerges gradually, at first several independent micro-sounds appear and are gathered at a slow pace, in order to then become organized and create musical phrases. Through these phrases various polyrhythms emerge which in turn are increased and eventually create a unified sound mass. The energy of this mass creates tension so that it becomes more and more dense until it reaches its peak and release. It will then weaken by gradually subtracting its density and organization of its individual elements until we reach the end and the initial silence. The evolution of this piece could be explained very simply with a shape of a triangle, although we will see that there are important events within this piece that break its seemingly linear evolution and dramatically affect the listener's anticipation.

Scala

ClapaChimBala | for fixed media with algorithmic spatialisation

This short study tries to explore a methodology for presenting electronic music by incorporating algorithmic processes -within the SuperCollider programming language- for the spatialisation of sounds in real-time using a large number of loudspeakers.

ClapaChimBala

Echo the nymph of reflection (2020)

Stereo electroacoustic composition

Composed in the composer’s personal studio

Performers recorded: Machi Dimitriadou Lindahl [dance] and Agnese Banti, Iliana Karaliga and Fotini Dakaki [singing performance] 

Programme note: Echo is a tragic nymph. She is the nymph that was punished with the curse of not being able to speak her own words, but only being able to repeat the last words spoken by another person. This cruel punishment led to her tragic end. She lost her body and became a spirit, existing in all those places-spaces that echo our voices back. 

Echo did not consider the consequences of her actions, she failed to reflect on them and, as a result, she received this cruel punishment. Is it possible to think of Echo as a symbol of a process that can lead to completion? When Narcissus asked Echo “Who are you?”, he received the echorepetition of his question. This triggered something inside him; it made him realise that he is the son of the rivernymph. What he really wanted then was to reconnect with his mother and his real nature, to become one with the source of his creation. This liberated him, but, at the same time, brought his human life to an end. 

The myth could be a reminder that reflection is a way to understand and realise things about ourselves. Echo is one of these reflections; she can make our voice, which is asking the question “Who are you?”, return to us and ask us who we are. How do we feel when we hear our voices ask us who we are? Can this, as previously suggested, lead to an understanding and realisation, or is it also possible for it to lead to destruction? The easiest, but, also the most honest answer, is that both are possible. If both realisation and destruction are possible, then can we choose which of the two we want? If it is possible to choose, what would you choose?

Echo The Nymph Of Reflection (2020)

Zinc & Copper: Hilary Jeffery_trombone, Robin Hayward_microtonal tuba, Elena Kakaliagou_french horn.
Concert excerpt from Heimathafen Berlin on the 12.02.2015

Well Tuned Brass Kontraklang 12.02.15

To Martha
La Mer is made up of two independent movements: La mer bleue, and La mer profonde.
The hum of the bees treated electronically creates the waves of the sea. A string quartet, also treated, reminds the light on the surface and the liquid fluency. La Mer expresses the joy and the purity of the water and proposes a listening in two levels. The first one is an imaginary perception of the sea. Serene or stormy: the sun sparkles on the water, the colours-frequencies become blurred during the descent, the darkness of the profound… The second is a symbolic perception: the deep of the sea is the cemetery for the shipwrecks and the image of the fecundity, the passage to Hades and the road to new discoveries.

La mer [The Sea] was realized in 1996 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio in Ohain (Belgium) and premiered in June 1997 in Mons (Belgium). It was awarded an Honorable mention at the 1st Biennal Acousmatic Composition Competition Métamorphoses (Brussels, Belgium, 2000) and was finalist at 27th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art Competition (France, 2000).

Premiere: June 1997, Concert, Mons (Belgium).
(electrocd.com)

Epoque de l'eau

La Mer Profonde

Arioso Dolente / Beethoven Op. 110 is based on Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110, and more specifically on the third movement, which provided all the sonic material for the composition. The arioso dolente, which carries out the main melodic themes, is the epicentre of the third movement. Although I have largely maintained the harmonic structure and even the melodic profiles of the movement, the electroacoustic piece remains a comment on the original piano sonata rather than an analytical approach to Beethoven’s music. I was more interested in the spiritual aspects of the sonata. Beethoven had just rebounded from a period of illness. His recovery sparked his creative forces resulting in the genesis of Op. 110. Both the joy and the melancholy of life are merged in this movement as an omnipresent duality. While composing my musical comment on Beethoven’s adagio I tried to enhance this duality by means of spectral transparency and luminosity which often contrast and converse with textural obscurity and opacity. The main melodic theme of the original arioso dolente appears in the middle of the piece, remote, magnified and utterly stretched in time.

Arioso Dolente / Beethoven Op. 110 was realized in 2002 at the studio of City University in London (England, UK) and the composer’s studio, and premiered on June 1, 2002, during the festival Intorno a Beethoven in Cagliari (Sardinia). The piece was commissioned by Amici della Musica di Cagliari (Sardinia). Thanks to Maria Metaxaki for the piano recordings, and to Lucio Garau for initiating the commission. Arioso Dolente / Beethoven Op. 110 was awarded the 1st Prize (UK Section) at the 2003 transatlantic competition Jeu de temps/Times Play and has been recorded on the compact discs Epoque de l’Eau and Cache 2003 CA+UK. 
(electrocd.com)

Ferrum Voces

stelios tsiloglou - ignatiadis

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