for recordings of satellites, string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou April 18th 2021
Quatuor Diotima

**********************

Achille Judica-Cordiglia and his brother Giovanni Battista are well-known amateur radio operators who claimed in the late fifties and early sixties to have heard radio communications taken from secret Soviet Union space missions, including SOS signals, telemetry, and the dying sounds (heartbeats and breathing) of a suffocating "lost cosmonaut.” Even though their claims have been thoroughly debunked, the stories of these sensational intercepts are part of the mythology of the Space Age and stand at the origin of a durable conspiracy theory.
In the 1960s, the idea of a “lost cosmonaut” spoke to acute fears. Despite the optimism of space exploration tales, the reality of space travel—from sending a dog into orbit to putting a man on the moon—had a striking effect on the public and raised more life-altering questions than it provided answers. A cosmonaut lost in space served as a poignant metaphor for individuals’ anxieties about the future in an era of nuclear tension and uncertainty. This helps to explain the diffusion and the longevity of a hoax that identified the stain of some kind of original sin on the shiny surface of the triumphs of the early space age. Now that the cosmos has switched in our imaginations from being the route toward a radiant future for humanity to a place of accumulation for space capitalism or a post-doomsday shelter for the extremely rich, these stories of dead astronauts are more sinister and haunting than ever.

The title "Memories of the Space Age" is borrowed from the collection of stories of the same name by J.G. Ballard (1988), a set of writings thematically linked around rotting launch gantries at Cape Canaveral, the failure of the US space program, dead astronauts eternally orbiting in space, deserted hotels lining the Florida coast, and the lonely, disturbed individuals who linger at the fringes of this lost dream of the Space Age.

The piece uses more than 100 historical radio recordings of human-made objects gravitating in Low Earth Orbit, for example, the beacon beeps of satellites, telemetries, and the voices of cosmonauts, along with the ill-famed Judica-Cordiglia tapes. This material—shifted and transposed to match the harmonic structure of the piece—is the starting point for an imitation game that involves the string quartet and that grows into a complex three-layered polyphony.

In addition to these archival materials, the electronic material features digital processing of the string instruments with the modulation techniques that were, and still are, commonly used for radio and television transmission. The fragile, inharmonic sonorities of the prepared strings are mirrored by electronic phenomena like feedbacks or physically-modeled chaotic circuits that behave in similarly erratic ways, in a laborious attempt to tame the untamable while at the same time pursuing serendipitous glitches.

"Memories of the Space Age" deals with the aesthetics of ground noise, white noise, and lost radio waves, with the misuse and malfunctions of technology, and with the misinterpretation of a chaotic signal as pareidolia. It is also, somehow, a nostalgic homage to obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies and to the visions of the future these technologies carried. That future now seems irretrievably lost, but its ghost, like Ballard’s dead astronauts, still haunts us.

Mauro Lanza - "Memories of the Space Age" (2020)

Michael Levinas : Les Désinences (1st movement, Prélude-Fantaisie). Live recording, La Grave, Aug 2, 2014

Les Désinences

2016 11/16 Release 1st Full Album : Preludes for Piano Book 1 
http://akihikomatsumoto.com/works/preludesforpianobook1.html
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/2IhnWMsxO9QRsvmQUygyOM?si=meBnsmlhTECnI1M9TnnFQw
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坂本龍一
これは21世紀ならではのピアノ前奏曲集だ。しかしこれがピアノの音なのか?不思議だ。

evala
過去1000年にも及ぶ音楽の実験と洗練の歴史を織り込みながら、まるで、まだ見ぬ人工生命が自発的にピアノと戯れているかのような楽曲群。これは最先端の電子音響でも現代音楽でもない。ピアノという楽器がもつ新しいユートピアのかたちだ。その優艶さに、またひとつ音楽の未来が楽しみになった。

藤本隆行(DUMBTYPE, Kinsei R&D)
人間が組織づけた音は、その構造によって人の感情に揺さぶりをかけたり、知的な経験を与えたりする。それを聴く側、つまり「人の心」を理解しようとするときには、乱暴な言い方をすると「精神医学」と「神経科学」の、2つのアプローチがあるように思う。精神分析などを使って迷路の中に踏み込んでいく方法と、脳を含めた身体の働きを、科学(西洋)的に細分化し切り刻んで、関係性を解明していく方法。
そのどちらが正しいのか?というのは、適切な問いの立て方ではない。
現代音楽のセオリーに全く無縁な僕が聴くと、とても饒舌でロマンチックと言ってもいいかと思うこの楽曲群は、実は音楽にとっての「精神医学」と「神経科学」の両方を深く考えた、稀有なバランスの上に成立している。

畠中実(キュレーター、美術/音楽批評)
プリペアド・ピアノは、ピアノの弦の間に異物を挟み込みピアノという楽器固有の音色を異化したものだが、この松本の言う、ピアノ以外の「楽器」は一切使用していない演奏による、12の前奏曲は、いわばコンピュータ・プログラムによってプリペアドされたピアノによる演奏とも言い得るだろうか。それぞれがコンピュータの異なる処理によって拡張されたコンポジションおよび楽器、そして演奏者による新たなピアニズムを模索しているようだ。それは自動筆記的でもあり、また、映像的な喚起力を内包してもいる。

國崎晋(サウンド&レコーディング・マガジン編集人)
とても複雑な構造から成るピアノは、もっとも完成された楽器として広く知られている。松本はそんな楽器の王様にあたかも初めて接するような態度で臨み、鍵盤を弾くという本来の奏法だけでなく、弦をフィードバックさせたり筐体をたたいたり、どんなアプローチをすればどんな音が出るのかを、ひとつひとつ丁寧に確かめていったのだろう。その結果獲得した幾多の響きを増幅するための作曲技法、音響処理を徹底的に考え抜いて作られたのがこの12の楽曲だ。従来のピアノの枠にとどまらない12の新しい楽器が、それぞれの特性に合わせ極限まで洗練された演奏方法によって奏でられていくさまは、まさに息をのむほど優美なものである。
Amazon(JP)
http://amzn.to/2e3fJcZ

2016/11/16 Release! Preludes for Piano Book 1 Teaser

Tenebrae, extrait 1

paw-marks in wet cement (2015–17), for piano, two percussionists, and amplified ensemble.
Performed by Wilhem Latchoumia, and the EOC conducted by Daniel Kawka.

Clara Iannotta : paw-marks in wet cement (2015–17), for piano, 2 perc, and ensemble

SPEC. : Voice, Cello, & Live Electronics [2017]

Written for Duo Illegal’s May 2019 residency at Stanford University, The Space of Two Frames is a work composed for voice, piano, and electronics.  Thematically, in this work I am trying to explore the ways in which the unconscious mind exerts its influence over our own present thoughts and mental state, specifically as it relates to conditions such as depression and anxiety.  

Compositionally, the work is focused on the interactions and relationships between the three voices, and the agency with which these entities act.  At times, one voice may seek to exert control over the situation through brute force, while at other moments the relationship may be one of ambivalence or submission, and further states in which the context is intentionally nebulous.  Ultimately, this manifests as a work which is at times gestural and chaotic, and which at others is recursive and static, and which further explores the gradations between these states.

This concept is augmented musically through a number of technical elements which are utilized in the performance of this work.  These technical implements include computer-controlled motors and transducers placed inside of the piano, which utilize the piano as a resonating body, and which are further mediated through physical action.  Additionally, the vocalist has microphones attached to the palms of their hands; purposefully presenting a situation in which their own voice is most successfully amplified, and transduced into the piano, by a physical action which would otherwise be most emblematic of smothering one’s voice.  The electronics for this work are presented in eight-channels as both mediated fixed-media and real-time processing, and are predominantly constructed from the sounds of the human voice, piano, and paper materials.

The Space of Two Frames (2019) // Performed by Duo Illegal

Commissioned by Ensemble Contrechamps - Geneva 

First performance by members of Ensemble Contrechamps 

Antoine Françoise - piano 
Susanne Peters - bass flute 
Laurent Bruttin - bass clarinet 

https://contrechamps.ch

@La Cave 12 Geneva 

https://www.cave12.org

Nicolas Roulive - electronics
David Poissonnier - sound engineer

"Toccatina" for bass flute, bass clarinet, piano and electronics (2019-2020)

Contrabass Saxophone and electronics played by Dror Feiler.
Composed and mixed by Dror Feiler

Zvug IV

for 8 instruments, commissioned by Ensemble Proton-Bern as part of the ProtonWerk #9 project

Premiere recording on March 2nd 2020 @Dampfzentrale Bern

Flute : Bettina Berger
Oboe/ Lupophone : Martin Bliggenstorfer
Contrass Clarinet : Richard Haynes 
Contraforte : Elise Jacoberger
Piano : Samuel Fried
Harp : Mathilde Bernard
Violin : Maximilian Haft 
Violoncello : Jan-Filip Tulpa

Conductor : Gregor A.Mayrhofer

Published with the authorization of Ensemble Proton-Bern

SPEC. : Voice, Cello, & Live Electronics [2017]

X. Lee

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