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Works

Agostino Di Scipio
5 Interazioni cicliche alle differenze sensibili
(1998)
for String quartet and Electronics


Length: 12:00
Buyed by: Commissione CEMAT 1997

In this work, the string quartet evokes an ensemble of ancient Eastern plucked instruments, or, in a purely materialistic attitude, a network of spring/mass mechanisms. The instrumental parts have a polyphony of micro-rhythmical patterns, an underworld of hisses and whistles, insect noises, interferences, etc. Once a genuine expression of perfect harmony and symmetry in the musical discourse, the quartet turns into a noise generator.
The performers' nuances (in tempo and dynamics) change according to the output from the computer. In its turn, the computer matches the strings direct sound against the overall sound travelling through the concert place (ambient), and adjusts the processing details according to the signal differences detected. The work becomes a kind of "ecological" system, capable of different reactions upon different venues hosting the performance. Each time, the sound bears traces of the historical and material ambience where the sound is. Micro-sound processing methods are used (real-time "sound granulation") resulting into grainy, dirty, rough textures, by-products of a process of "vaporisation", a kind of dismemberment of sound, a deliberately composed decomposition. Granulation = bits of silence come into the sound and make its "fibres" to divide, to wear out, to break apart into separate noise bursts. Work commissioned by CEMAT. After the 1998 première, in Rome, it was performed at the Berlin ICMC - International Computer Music Conference (August 2000), and included in the ICMC compact disc, and then performed at the Festival Synthèse in Bourges (June 2001).
(A. Di Scipio)