|
Blattwerk 2002 |
Cello and Live Electronics
Blattwerk was
completed in the summer of 2002. It was commissioned by CRFMW (Liège), Musica
(Strasbourg) and FORMAT (Bruges), and written for Arne Deforce. The electronic
part was realised in collaboration with Patrick Delges. Blattwerk combines highly-precise
musical specifications (both in the score and in the fixed sections of electronic
music) with free improvisation for both performers, and a computer program which
samples and plays back its materials autonomously with varying degrees of randomness.
The poetic origins of Blattwerk are almost childishly simple: I imagined the
path taken by a leaf as it falls from a tree and is then moved in impenetrably
complex trajectories by the action of the wind, or just as suddenly laid temporarily
to rest by a moment of calm, or set quivering by the merest movement of air;
and I imagined this path as taking place not outside the window but in the multidimensional "configuration space" of the cello, leaving a sonorous trace as it goes, and
set in motion not by wind but by the (conflicting?) energies of composition
and improvisation.
It consists of five main parts, which succeed one another like "scenes" in which
the cellist is confronted by a sequence of different sound-environments. The
first does not involve the live cellist at all, while the second is for amplified
cello alone. In the third, the cello is surrounded by fragmented and transformed
"images" of itself from the computer, whose sound-material begins with a recording
of the second part and gradually replaces this with fragments of the third;
the score contains "lacunae" in which the cellist may respond improvisationally
to this (partly unforeseeable) environment, and which are also incorporated
into the computer's pool of material. In the fourth part, this process continues
and an additional active part for live electronics joins the proliferating music,
while the improvisational aspects of the music grow to dominate. The fifth part
suddenly returns to precision: the cellist is now "fixed" into rhythmical unison
within an ensemble of pre-recorded cellos.
In
listening, however, one should probably not be explicitly concerned with the
delineations between composed and improvised music or between fixed and real-time
electronic music. Each contributes towards a context for the others, in which
the evolution of the music may be perceived as a unity. All musical scores pose
a question to their performers (and audience); most composers seem to expect
the simple answer "YES!" from both, while Blattwerk is an attempt to engender
a more nuanced and complex, and perhaps more fruitful, response.
© Richard Barrett