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Katasterismoi (1998-99) |
Katasterismoi was composed between October 1998 and June 1999, and is dedicated to Peter Wiegold on the occasion of his 50th birthday. This title (transformations into stars) was given by Eratosthenes (3rd century BC: also the first person to measure the earth's circumference) to his compilation of those Hellenic myths concerned with the origin of the constellations. Various mythical personages were supposed to have been rewarded by the gods by having their image fixed eternally among the stars. Our contemporary katasterismoi derive from scientific rather than poetic precepts, and concern such phenomena as supernovae and the big bang.
All I mean to suggest by the title is the process by which sound-materials (which in this case derive entirely from concrete sources) achieve their fixation (petrification?) in an electronic composition, transformed and recombined into new structures and configurations, some of which (like some constellations) betray the shape of their supposed origins, while others (likewise) require a leap of the imagination to identify. Also: in the time of Eratosthenes, the stars were believed to be equidistant from the earth, whereas now it is apparent that most constellations as viewed from a terrestrial standpoint are composed of stars at unimaginable distances from one another, that is to say they aren't really constellations at all.
The principal sound-materials derive from the music of the biwa, a Japanese instrument bearing some resemblance to the lute. This sound partakes of the characteristic pitch- and timbre-mobility of Japanese music; furthermore, this particular instrument is played (both plucked and struck) using a large triangular plectrum (bachi) which emphasises its percussive capacity, and the strings are stopped on frets with flattened tops, often producing a buzzing sound which in a Western classical instrument would be something to be avoided at all costs. These features lend the material an often explosive energy and a complex microstructure, both of which were distilled and intensified by the compositional working. The artefacts of digital sound processing may, in addition, generate a further fictional level of microstructure, by revealing features among the interstices of the material which were not in any real sense present in its original form.
On the other hand, of course, sound processing may also degrade the material to which it is applied, by homogenising whatever internal structures which are present. However, the biwa didn't provide all of the materials, but something more like a central point, around which, with increasing timbral/morphological distance, the decreasingly recognisable products of multiply-processed biwa sounds become indistinguishable from occasional sounds of altogether different provenance.
© Richard Barrett