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profiles - works

Works

Roberto Doati
Felix Regula (IV)
(1997)
for Eight channels tape

Felix Regula is a work commissioned by and realized at the Centre de Recherches Musicales de Wallonie in Liège. When i received the invitationn to realize a new piece with instruments and electrocnics it has been natural for me, living in Padova, to think to Johannes Ciconia (1340-1411). Not only because the great composer and and theorician from Liège lived his years in Padova, but also the deep interactionbetween science and music there is in his life and work. As a composer working with computer since long time, I developed a musical thought shaped on this new technology. As technology I do not simply mean here the machine. I am referring to the technology as an ensemble of new scientific procedures to investigate and trasform the nature (tekhné- Arts and Crafts).
The "nature" to be trasformed is a virelai by Ciconia (Sus une fontayne) which represents for me an archetype of the interest many composers had and still have on mirror games. So in the five different versions of the piece I realized, I broke and rebuilt the form of the Ciconia virelai with musical instruments (violin, flute-flute in G, clarinet-bass clarinet-double bass clarinet) mirroring not only each other, as in the music of the past, but also in my preferred mirror: the computer technology.
The computer trasformation of the instrumental sounds are therefore connceived as a sort of double of each instrument, but differently disposed in time according the esprit de géométrie peculiar of Ciconia's work. The instruments are also acoustically treated, as the original pitches of the Ciconia'song are changed as concern the modalities of their emission using instrumental contemporary techniques (slap, tongue ram, multiphonics, etc.)
IV Felix Regula is a 8 track version of the piece: track 1 (violin recording), track 2 (flute recording), track 3 (clarinet recording), tracks 4-5 ( eectronics from violon), tracks 6-7 (electronics from flute), track 8 (electronics from clarinet). The performance of the work is totally free as concern dynamics of the different tracks.