resonant chamber music for harp, violin and electronics with a reasonable number of loudspeakers and microphones
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Written for and dedicated to Sofiia Suldina and Estelle Costanzo
Commissioned by the Association du Concours Nicati
The two instrumental performers generate controlled feedback using a delayed microphone-transducer system. For this purpose, small electromechanical transducers are attached to the resonance chambers of the harp and violin.
In the performance space (or outdoors), a reasonable number of microphones are positioned so that the performers can move from one station to the next in as direct a line as possible.
The microphones are delayed by a few seconds by the electronics and sent back to the respective transducers via a wireless in-ear system, where they are amplified via the instrument's resonance chamber.
Each loudspeaker is assigned to a microphone and distributed throughout the room in such a way that it is not in the immediate vicinity of its assigned microphone. The delayed signal from the microphone is also amplified and reproduced by its assigned loudspeaker, but in such a way that no feedback can occur between it and the microphone.
The number of microphones and loudspeakers should not be less than five and will be adjusted to the size of the room. A maximum number is not defined. The duration of the process depends on the number of stations and is therefore variable.
Each performer plays half of the available stations, whereby a station is not played more than once, unless the number of stations is odd. In this case, the last station is played by both performers simultaneously or alternately.
Both instrumental performers go to their respective first stations. One performer begins to position the instrument at the microphone or, in the case of the harp, the microphone at the instrument, so that the microphone capsule almost touches the top of the sound box or enters the sound box, and plays a first note in the middle range of its ambitus.
Due to the natural sound characteristics of the instrument, frequencies are gradually filtered out or amplified and the note played becomes a continuous sound. By turning and moving the instrument or the microphone, other frequencies are amplified or filtered due to the radiation characteristics of the instruments. The performer can thus control the resulting sounds by positioning the instrument relative to the microphone.
However, changing a standing sound requires a lot of patience. The instrument or microphone should therefore be moved extremely carefully and slowly. The dynamics can also be controlled by adjusting the distance to the microphone. The sound is frozen in an endless loop in the loudspeaker if the instrumental performers do not make any further changes to the sound; however, the duration of an action should remain within the range of two to three minutes.
This process is repeated from station to station until, at the end, the filtered sounds of the resonating bodies remain alone in the room as an installation sculpture.
Only at the beginning does the second performer start with a time delay to the first; afterwards, they move independently of each other.