Written for and performed by pianist Ben Smith at 'MUSICON: Eternal Returns' on 9.6.2021.

Many thanks to Simone Tarsitani, Eric Egan and Musicon, Durham University for the recording.

Watch the full concert here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZX8WNkc2VM&t=1527s

This piece is in dialogue with an earlier work of mine, 'flicker': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4RQoseTp7Y

flare (2021)

Lossless

Cello: Anton Lukoszevieze 

Berwick New Music Series, 08.10.2022

Aurora (2022)

Rehearsal recorded in preparation for my gig at Cafe Oto, London, on 7 December. Swing by if you're in London: www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/naviar-haiku-fest/

Or join the Bandcamp stream: naviarrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/navia…om-cafe-oto

Zooming into some contemplative, expansive guitar explorations inspired by the following haiku:

from the mist
a boat for cutting reeds in the morning
has begun to emerge

In response to Naviar Haiku's 464th weekly assignment.

haiku by Mizuhara Shūōshi https://haikutopics.blogspot.com/2006/05/mizuhara-hana-no-ame.html

Mizuhara Shuoshi was a 20th century Japanese poet. Shuoshi rebelled against the principles of emotional detachment in haiku, which he thought limited his ability to emotionally express himself through poetry: he started a magazine called Staggerbush which focused on a more romantic, lyrical type of haiku.

mist/reeds/morning (naviarhaiku464)

Strintrio II – friction 
for sringtrio 1995 – 97

The starting-point for friction was an observation of the conditions under which tones are produced on string instruments, which yielded material illuminating these conditions.  Stroke speed, pressure (i.e. the physical conditions) and also the material properties were brought into a relationship with one another, which on the one hand takes on the form of a concise sound progression and on the other hand reflects the fundamental conditions governing this set of instruments.  In the course of the piece this material framework is stressed in both directions: the progression of sounds and the events that constitute it are analysed by means of isolation and maximisation processes through which they undergo qualitative changes.  The analysis is conducted from the point of view of the frictional conditions, and this viewpoint becomes itself the object of compositional analysis by way of the elements that represent it. 
 
Analysing all the material and formal qualities relevant for perception (from the point of view of the frictional conditions) constitutes the attempt to draw upon fundamental conditions for the conception of music.  The goal is to grasp also the conditions of perception- of listening.  It is the attempt to make listening directly thematic: listening as an absolute event, listening as a socially conditioned event and listening as a creative act on the part of the listener.  It seems to me that the direct questioning of these phenomena through the tonal reality of music is the only way to work on renewing the act of listening.

Chambermusic I

Streichtrio II (Friktion) 1995/97 [22:15]

Looking for the Magic (Studio ver.)

xart7832271023

Cylinder 13q* [embryonic Mix]

Multlayer performance by Jeff Gburek and Karolina Ossowska. Compositional framework generated by JG -- process derived from feeding a fire place while playing frame drum, cymbals and singing bowls so that the sounds of kindling, shovelling ash and other actions blend with the playful dance or organizing the burn. Karolina Ossowska improvised 3 violin tracks to accompany the stem sounds. These violin sounds (col legno battuto, flageolets, pressurized bow-drags) were reconfigured, splintered with various time-line offsets but remain organic and never subjected to any granular convolutions. Sounds from shortwave radio SDR create a kind of cantus firmus reflecting yet again the ionosopheric morphing layers of the planet in geomagnetic warped transitions as expressed by signals bounced into open radios tuned between stations on the floor. Work in progress/regress, clearly. I am reminded of a recent conversation whereine I paid homage to the nature mystic and great Romanian-born architect of chaos theory music, Iannis Xenakis.

Witch Hazel Gathering

Making of – intimacy beschäftigt sich mit der Normierung der intimen Erfahrung, lässt sie als Klangformen in ihrer Vorgeformtheit und Schablonisierung durchsichtig werden. Zugleich arbeitet das Stück an der Spezifikation der Klangformen und -strukturen durch kompositorische Transformationen und unternimmt den Versuch, die normierten Empfindungen, die mit den überkommenen und zumeist ungefragt übernommenen Klanggestalten einhergehen, aufzulösen und durch eine gehobene, ins „genau-Jetzt-so-seiende“ Präsenz zu überführen.
Thematisiert werden die in klangliche Erscheinungen transformierten Erfahrungen unseres intimen Erlebens, Erfahrungen, die wir alle kennen, die jede und jeder von uns für sich selbst als „die Besonderen“ erlebt haben wird. Deren Formen und Erleben sind aber kulturell geprägt. Unsere Wahrnehmung und unser Erleben sind geprägt durch die Welt, in der wir leben: Wir lernen zu hören und das Gehörte entsprechend den geltenden Konventionen zu erleben. Die kompositorische Arbeit an der Vorgeformtheit unseres Erlebens bietet die Möglichkeit, eine einzigartige, unwiederbringliche intime Klang-Erfahrung zu kreieren. Klang-Erfahrungen, die sich einer Schubladisierung verweigern und sich nicht sofort einordnen lassen; deren Erfahrung uns selbst wiederum intim werden lässt, indem wir „nackt“ vor ihnen sind und sie als solche hören.
Als eine kompositorisch grundlegend veränderte Form des Erlebens von (ehemals vorgefertigten) Klang- und Erlebnisschablonen, in und durch grundlegend veränderte Kontextualisierungen kann dann die Erfahrung diese Klangstrukturen spezifisch und einzigartig werden lassen. Dieser Organismus, der durch das Stück, die Musiker*innen, die Zuhörer*innen und den Raum gebildet werden wird, lässt – so die Intention – die Grenzen des Erlebens durchlässig(er) werden und ermöglicht hoffentlich Erfahrungen jenseits der Norm.

Making Of – Intimacy

"Disiecta Membra" (2014)
for six voices

Live Recording 
February 5th 2015 
Festival ECLAT Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Neue Vocalsolisten

Disiecta Membra, latin for “scattered fragments” is an expression used to refer to surviving fragments of ancient poetry, manuscripts and other literary or cultural objects, but can also literally means "scattered limbs" or "scattered members". 
The membra this piece is dealing with are the different cuts of Grunnius Cocotta, the imaginary pig whose last wills are summoned in the Testamentum Porcelli, a parodic middle-age text. The short excerpt of this text that I decided to use is an inventory of twelve body parts that the pig, right before being slaughtered, bequeaths to twelve categories of will beneficiaries.

Et de meis visceribus dabo donabo sutoribus saetas, 
rixoribus capitinas, 
surdis auriculas, 
causidicis et verbosis linguam, 
bubulariis intestina, 
isiciariis femora, 
mulieribus lumbulos, 
pueris vesicam, 
puellis caudam, 
cinaedis musculos, 
cursoribus et venatoribus talos, 
latronibus ungulas

[And from my body I shall give and contribute to the cobblers my bristles, to quarrelers my head-parts, to the deaf my ears, to lawyers and the wordy my tongue, to sausage-makers my intestines, to makers of meat products my thighs, to women my little loins, to boys my bladder, to girls my tail, to poofters my muscles, to runners and hunters my ankles, to brigands my hooves]
	
One can easily draw a comparison between this parodic list and the amass of dismembered bodies of saints that (still) populate catholic churches all around Europe. 
Mikhail Bakhtin in his “Rabelais and his time” elaborated the concept of grotesque body and wrote extensively about these holy remains: 

"At the time of Rabelais ridicule relics were quite common, especially, of course, in the Protestant satire […]
Dismembered body of the saint in medieval literature has repeatedly given rise to grotesque images, and transfers. In one of the best medieval parody travesties - in "Treatise Garcia" (1099), the hero, a wealthy Simonist archbishop of Toledo, brings to Rome as a gift the miraculous relics of holy martyrs Rufus and Albina […] "… from the kidneys Albina, from the innards Rufina, from the stomach, from the back, from the backside, from the edges of chest from the legs, the hands, from the neck. What else? - From all the members of both bodies of the martyrs. " We see that already in the XI century relics gave rise to a purely grotesque anatomy of the dismembered body"

While the catalog of pig cuts of the Testamentum has a direct influence on the form of the piece - which is indeed a catalog of short pieces, each related to a different body part -, this reference to relics is suggested by the use of several musical quotations issued from Membra Jesu Nostri, the famous set of seven cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude, which is also a catalog of limbs: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. Curiously enough, what is considered to be the first Lutheran oratorio has the form of a massive immaterial reliquary for a body that left no material remains. 

The contrast between this longing for the absent flesh and the carnavalesque exuberance of the Testamentum was the basic source of inspiration for the composition of Disiecta Membra. 


Making Of – Intimacy

Clemens Gadenstätter

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