for amplified trio: voice, percussion, and violin

performed by Charlotte Mundy, Ellery Trafford, and Marina Kifferstein

recording by David Bird and Laura Cocks

my name is gasoline. i have no thoughts. 
i hold your hand, like you,
i smell bad. i buy pastries now.

call me gasser. i love mud now.
i ground your city, even you, 
i taste it. i burn a million years.

i have no memories. name me that.
i hang.
fake me aren't wet, still you.

i’m strange split portion sin,
guaifenesin, and you all over,
what am i?

loosens in me,
i starnge. without you 
bear too ripen.

bloat. i was all day inside skin.
i was all day now. still rage
plugged inside out. demon eyes was me now.
i was to neptune. i was back.

was (2021)

Feldlinien (2013)

Matteo Cesari (flute)

Tremplin de la création - Philharmonie de Paris 12/03/2022


“Le comte est donc si vain et si peu raisonnable ! Ose-t-il croire encor son crime pardonnable ?’”
Pierre Corneille, Le Cid.
Cette phrase de Don Fernand qui ouvre la scène VI de l’acte II tisse la trame de cette œuvre pour flûte solo.
Reprenant le principe du vers alexandrin, l’interprète développe divers modèles répétitifs et récursifs qui interrompent inopinément sa forme constante.
Ces modèles, caractérisés par une rythmicité idiomatique, renforcent une structure mécanique qui se rétrécit progressivement.
Toute la pièce serpente autour de cette idée maîtresse et le geste instrumental est progressivement lié à la parole humaine.

Scène VI (2014 / revised version 2022)

Dedicated to all Iranian people who have been fighting for their human rights for 100 days!

Performer: Parsa Zandi

24.12.2022

"Inexhaustible resistance" - Setar Improvisation

A - P

co-commissioned by the SWR Symphonieorchester and the ELISION Ensemble 
dedicated to Robin Kirkham

premiered by the SWR Symphonieorchester and the ELISION Ensemble at the ECLAT Festival, February 2, 2024

conducted by Brad Lubman

For Seed I:
Peter Veale, baroque oboe
Carl Rosman, 3-key baroque clarinet in D and basson de chalumeau
James Aylward, baroque bassoon 
Alex Waite, harpsichord

For Seed II:
Christoph Grund, piano
Ursula Eisert, harp
SWR Symphonieorchester

Not intended as a concerto, Das Phonem zwischen zwei Wörtern (b) is composed in two different tunings for two interdependent pieces, which can be performed together or as two stand-alone works. Written for baroque ensemble and large orchestra, this work is the second part of a three-part cycle, which engages with a multidimensional study on timbral and harmonic spaces, intended to offer an approach for re-thinking how discrete mappings of a given tuning can be re-imagined simultaneously within continuous terms.

In this work, the piece engaging with the large orchestra was written in 443Hz and composed in relation to a 3D acoustic model that I designed based on architectural structures that are no longer standing — namely the 6th-century Basilica of St. John in Ephesus and the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Rather than for simulation or a fixed point of observation, this approach to 3D modeling was activated to develop sonic-temporal architecture emerging from two spaces, as a way to visualize and re-imagine what lies in-between, through which embodied spaces of the pasts that have been erased become visible through corporeal reach and sound.

This cycle brings together collaborative research initiated in parallel with the study informed by the 3D modeling. Initiated in 2022, this research is based on numerous sessions conducted with Peter Veale on performing baroque oboe and modern oboe; Carl Rosman on performing 3-key baroque clarinet in D, modern clarinet in Bb as well as basson du chalumeau and modern bass clarinet; James Aylward on performing baroque bassoon and modern bassoon; and Alex Waite on performing harpsichord and piano.

Written in 415Hz, the piece composed for the “baroque ensemble” is informed by this research, and correspondingly engages with instrument design and its relation to body and space, not as means to arrange a fixed past with a fixed present, but rather to trace how coeval pasts inform contemporary performance praxes, while also unpacking the conditions surrounding how instrument design relates to embodiment and space.

Activating interrelationships of sound, space, and corporeality as a mode of unlearning, Das Phonem zwischen zwei Wörtern (b) in its simultaneity is therefore an effort to take account for what may be not rendered visible, but is nevertheless present in space, and to address traces of multiple pasts not just in relation to the conditions of what remains, but also to the conditions of erasure.

Das Phonem zwischen zwei Wörtern (b), for baroque ensemble and large orchestra

for ensemble, objects and electronics.
Recording of the premiere at Saint Jean d'Angély by ensembles Ars Nova and Proxima Centauri under the musical direction of Philippe Nahon.

Estela (2017)

Live-recording of the premiere of "Mirror Box Reflections" for dynamically amplified ensemble & live-electronics, by Ensemble Mosaik, cond. Enno Poppe. Kesselhaus, Kulturbrauerei, Berlin, 23/5/2019.
"Mirror Box Reflections" is an augmentation for 9 musicians with dynamic amplifications & live-electronics, of "Mirror Box", for saxophone, piano, percussion and live-electronics (2014-2015).

Mirror Box Reflections (Stefan Prins, 2015/2019) - LIVE

Referring to how Goethe describes architecture as petrified sounds, author and journalist Tim Rutherford-Johnson suggests that my compositional approach echoes “dissolving an ancient amber and letting a trapped insect fly away," and reverses the petrification when engaging with spatial constructs.

Named after Rutherford-Johnson’s text, this work is written for two interdependent compositional works, written separately for string quartet and orchestra, which can be performed simultaneously or as stand-alone works. As stand-alone works, these pieces reflect autonomous musical discourses. The simultaneous work conveys an interfacing medium, through which these two historically significant musical settings meet without offering a concerto or related form.

This encounter is activated by displaying the interplay between the physical and the perceived space. The latter, to me, results from the way in which sound sources interact with the listener, as varying spatial portrayals that color the spatializations of subjectivities. As the string quartet unfolds its character during the piece, the orchestra engages with the perceived space by re-constituting the characteristics of a sonic-architecture inferred from a spatial design and articulates the physical space.

For this design, I intended to work on The Church of Holy Apostles, which was once located in Istanbul and demolished following the Ottoman takeover of Istanbul to make way for the renowned Fatih Mosque. Aside from its influence on major architectural designs such as St Mark's Basilica, this church, for me, embodied political concepts such as cultural desolation, dislocation, and deconstruction, which continue to shape the constellation of acts that portray today’s social and political space in Turkey.

It was inevitable that any design I would model would be a hypothetical one, as there is either very limited or unreliable documentation for this church. By designing a hybrid structure based on both the Church of the Holy Apostles and the Fatih Mosque, I decided to work on a model that is also hypothetical, hoping to trace how these political constellations have been embodied. In doing so, the timbral morphology yielded by the sonic-architecture is analyzed for varying listening and sound source position combinations and re-imagined for the orchestration means used in the work.

©Turgut Erçetin 2010-2024 (All rights reserved).

—

Performed by the Arditti Quartet and SWR Symphonieorchester on February 8, 2020 at ECLAT Festival. 

Irvine Arditti, first violin
Ashot Sarkissjan, second violin
Ralf Ehlers, viola
Lucas Fels, cello

Conducted by Michael Wendeberg

—

Selected Reviews

"Lydia Jeschke mit einem Ausblick auf das ECLAT Festival 2020," SWR Kultur (2020).