Jean-Francois Charles's blog

The Blue Java

2009-07-03T16:08:00.001-04:00

During this summer of 2009, I am a Teaching Assistant for the course Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java at Harvard Summer School.

Java may be the most musical of all computer languages... Don't forget it's also the name of a French dance:

La Java Bleue (1938):

L'accordéoniste (1942):

Aqua Solo by Alex Tarbert - live recording

2009-06-27T17:20:00.001-04:00

I want to congratulate and thank the excellent bassist Alex Tarbert, who performed the premiere of my composition for double bass solo Aqua Solo.

Here is the link to listen to and download the track on last.fm:
Aqua Solo - composition for double bass solo
First part: arco
Second part: pizzicato (starts after about 3 minutes)

Have a look at the program notes, and a glimpse of the manuscript, on the concert announcement post.

In case you are a bass player, and want to include a piece in a double bass competition or a double bass recital, don't hesitate to contact me!

Expo 74

2009-06-20T10:50:00.001-04:00

Want to hear my French accent in San Francisco? Check out this short video!

If you feel like patching, I suggest:

Gregory Taylor's brand new article LFO Tutorial 4: Building Complexity.
a Max/MSP/Jitter patch to slice sounds automatically: I posted it recently with my other spectral patches (10-sliced-playback).

Eruption for Orchestra

2009-06-14T21:56:00.001-04:00

BMOP reading my orchestration of Eddie Van Halen's Eruption

The electric guitar solo Eruption, by Van Halen, is "considered one of the most influential rock instrumentals of all time" (see linked wikipedia article). This Spring, I had a lot of fun transcribing it into a 2-minute orchestral piece. I bought the CD Van Halen, along with the transcriptions Van Halen Best Of, Volume I (Best of Van Halen). After analyzing the piece, I wrote the arrangement while paying a special attention to the orchestral playability. That's why I used very different time signatures than the ones in the guitar transcription book aforementioned.

An Orchestration Course at Harvard

This was my final project for a great orchestration class that I took this spring in the Music Department. Michael Gandolfi, Chair of the composition department at New England Conservatory, was teaching it as a special guest. With five other composers, we were lucky to study with this artist, very experienced and so enthusiastic with the orchestra as an instrument.

Michael Gandolfi and the Harvard Music Department invited BMOP, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, to read our final projects. Conductor Gil Rose and all the musicians did an awesome job.

I signed an agreement to not publish the recording, but I hope I will have the opportunity to share this music in the future. Indeed, this orchestral miniature may become an interlude of a larger piece mixing electric guitar and orchestra. I will have to get Eddie Van Halen's authorization in the first place, of course.

01-05/60 - Live Saturation video starring Mario Caroli

2009-05-24T07:05:00.001-04:00

One year after the premiere concert, here is the video of Live Saturation:

Live Saturation
for flute and electronic music
with Ruth Lepson's poetry

This is the live recording of Mario Caroli's Harvard recital, that took place on May 24th, 2008, to the invitation of the Harvard Group for New Music.

Mario Caroli plays Ivan Fedele

I studied under Maestro Ivan Fedele during several years at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. Mario Caroli is one of the best interprets of his music. That's why I'm happy to link to two video recordings with ensemble Algoritmo:

1. Notturno, for flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano, percussion, harp, 2 violins, viola, violoncello, and double bass.

2. Profilo in eco (first part), for solo flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano, percussion, violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass.

One more thing that I like in these recordings: the excellent clarinetist Roberta Gottardi is a friend since we played together the premiere and recording of Stockhausen's Rechter Augenbrauentanz.

Listen to Viola palustris

2009-05-15T22:05:00.001-04:00

Here is the live recording of this Alea III concert, when they premiered my composition Viola palustris.

Listen while watching this slide show with pictures by composer Phivos-Angelos Kollias.

A slide show put together by soloist Alan Lenarcic

You may also listen to the music and download the file:

<a href="http://jfcharles.bandcamp.com/track/viola-palustris">Viola palustris by Jean-Francois Charles</a>

Or if you prefer, Viola palustris on last.fm.

The musicians

The amazing soloist Alan Lenarcic was accompanied by Alea III, conducted by Theodore Antoniou:

Flute: Sue-Ellen Herschman-Tcherepnin
Oboe: Jane Harrison
Clarinet: Diane Heffner
Bassoon: Janet Underhill
Horn: Laura Carter
Trombone: Denis Lambert
Percussion: Thomas Schmidt and Philip Trembley
Piano: Yukiko Shimazaki
Violins: Irina Muresanu and Iman Khosrowpour
Viola: Anne Black
Cello: Mark Simcox
Double Bass: Irving Steinberg

Thanks to all of the artists for your awesome commitment, and congratulations for getting this great result in just 1h30 of rehearsal time!

Dudley House Music Festival - First Edition

2009-05-06T08:43:00.001-04:00

Dudley House is Harvard's house for graduate students and non-resident undergraduate students. It is a great place to make friends, grow interdisciplinary ideas, and have a coffee at Café Gato Rojo.

As one of the house music fellows, I am proud to announce the first Dudley House Music Festival. It is taking place this Sunday, May 10th, 2009 in Dudley House Main Dining Hall.

The Chorus will kick off the event with Haydn's Theresa Mass conducted by Michael Barrett.

Then, the World Music Ensemble will perform music from around the world, including original arrangements and new compositions. Multi-instrumentalist Behtash Babadi is the musical director.

Jazz Creative Combo & Big Band

The jazz combo's philosophy is to play creative jazz and have fun. By bringing in new arrangements of old music, or brand new compositions, we try and keep the spark of jazz well alive.

The Big Band during the recent Spring Swing
Picture by Jonathan Ruel, Café Gato Rojo manager

I am very happy to feature in the Big Band program the music of great composers. Duke Ellington, "of course", will be represented with two works. But we will perform as well unpublished works by Bob Mintzer and Mathias Rüegg, two majors big band leaders in the United States and in Europe.

The big band program

And the Angels Sing Johnny Mercer and Ziggy Elman, Benny Goodman band, 1939
Concerto for Cootie Duke Ellington, 1940
Starfire Benny Golson, Maynard Ferguson band, 1959
Theme from The Asphalt Jungle Duke Ellington, 1961
Coconut Champagne Denis Di Blasio, Maynard Ferguson band, 1983
Modern Day Tuba Bob Mintzer, 1993
Albert Einstein - Time is what you feel Mathias Rüegg, 2005
Josephine Baker - She need never regret! Mathias Rüegg, 2005

See you on Sunday! You will never regret.

Performance at Arts First Dance Festival 2009

2009-04-30T08:53:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, May 2nd, I will be performing the premiere of PPP, a new series of three short studies for dancing clarinetist:

Puppet a reflection on puppetry in music and dance
Perpetuum mobile remembering a Butoh performance
Pipo a clarinet is just a piece of wood

Arts First is Harvard's huge annual celebration of the arts. This year, hundreds of students and faculty take part to performances all around the campus, from April 30th to May 3rd. The crazy Performance Fair is taking place on Saturday May 2nd, 1-5 pm in 12 sites around Harvard Yard.

I'll be performing on Saturday at 2:30pm in the Dance Festival, in Lowell Hall. If you attend, make sure to stop by and say hello after the performance!

Ballade - A New Dancing Clarinetist!

2009-04-20T17:14:00.011-04:00

Today April 25th, my friend Megumi Tabuchi is performing my composition Ballade for dancing clarinetist. Megumi Tabuchi is a great clarinet player, and I am thrilled that she chose this piece as part of her musical theater recital. She decided to link the Ballade to "Dance", a text by the composer Georges Aperghis, with whom she has been working a lot. Thank you Megumi!

Score

For this occasion, I engraved the music. It's still a draft, but compare to the manuscript!

Aqua Solo - Composition for solo double bass

2009-04-19T17:30:00.004-04:00

You are invited to the premiere of Aqua Solo, taking place on Saturday, April 25th, 2009, 8pm, in Paine Hall, Harvard University.

Aqua Solo is a solo for double bass written after my double bass concerto Aqua.

I have been working for several weeks with the soloist Alex Tarbert, a complete bass player and very sensitive musician. He sounds great on both arco and pizzicato, and I'm sure the performance will be stunning.

Three excerpts of my manuscript

Inspiring bass solos

The double bass solos that I listened to when I was composing the concerto included:

Maknongan, by Giacinto Scelsi
In & Out, by Pascal Dusapin
Valentine, by Jacob Druckman
Trittico per G.S., by Brian Ferneyhough
The Ozell Tapes: The Official Bootleg, by Marcus Miller

I also used the book Les modes de jeu de la contrebasse/Modes of playing the double bass by Jean-Pierre Robert. This great bilingual book comes with 2 CDs and is a reference for composers and performers. You can find it through the French online store fnac.com.

Program notes

I just wrote program notes for this last HGNM (Harvard Group for New Music) concert of the 2008-2009 season:

In 2001, I founded the Ensemble New Flore. For our 2004 tour “Spirales”, I composed Aqua for double bass solo, aquaphone, clarinet, and live electronics. The piece was played by the Ensemble New Flore in Strasbourg, Bouxwiller, and Geneva, and by the Ensemble de Musique Interactive in Montbéliard, and at the French Institute in Florence (see pictures of this performance, with the aquaphone, on http://www.flickr.com/jfcharles ). Aqua Solo is a set of two pieces for solo double bass. The first part, Prelude, is played arco, and reminds us that the double bass is a descendant of the viol. The second part is a Blues, played pizzicato.
During the coming months, I intend to turn it into Aqua Duo, a work for double bass solo accompanied by clarinet and live electronics.
Aqua is the fourth part of the Arc-en-ciel. This cycle includes Magma, for contrabass clarinet, stones, and live electronics – Wu jú sè, for clarinet, double bass, Chinese opera gongs, and dancer – Rêver, for singing dancer and dancing clarinetist – Zygomatic, for voice and live electronics – Passage libre, for percussion and live electronics.

Update

Audio live recording of the concert.

Huseac Studio Users Group

2009-04-14T20:26:00.001-04:00

Huseac, the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition, is one of the great resources the Harvard Department of Music offers. I like most the history section of the web site!

The Studio Users Group is an informal forum for all the Huseac studio users to meet, share, and learn from each others. Last week, Robin Hodson of Avid/Digidesign/Sibelius was here to demonstrate features of the integration between Pro Tools DAW and Sibelius notation software.

The next meetings

This Wednesday, April 14th, 2009, from 2 to 4pm, I'm sharing my most recent Max/MSP/Jitter patch. I'll explain not only the patch "under-the-hood", but also the process I followed to get from the idea ("intelligent" or "transient-aware" granulation) to the working patch.

That's the idea. Together, we'll see how to get to the Max patch...

Next Wednesday, April 21st, Ean White, technical director of the studio, will explain & demonstrate the use of the new SoundField Surround microphone system.

April 28th may be a Max/MSP/Jitter patches mixer. Composer and Teaching Fellow Bert Van Herck will show how he used Max/MSP to model a real-world micro-tonal organ he will be composing for, and all participants are encouraged to bring patches of their own.

Lapalu - Viola and Live Electronics

2009-04-07T08:34:00.003-04:00

Here is the live recording of Lapalu, a composition for viola and live electronics.

Garth Knox, viola - Jean-François Charles, live electronics - Bert Van Herck, sound diffusion.
February 14th, 2009, Paine Hall, Harvard University.
You can also listen to the track on last.fm.

Spectral Sound Processing in Performance Time

In this composition, all of the electronic sounds are generated live, processed during the performance out of the viola sounds.

The instrument that I developed for this piece is an implementation of many of the graphically-based audio techniques I described in the article "A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing with Max/MSP and Jitter". For instance, you can hear some transient-aware time stretching as soon as 00:28. The live electronics are playing back the first viola arpeggios considerably slower. Details of the vibrato in the initial pizzicato chords become audible.

Sonic transformations that used to be done in studio can now be realized during the performance of a piece. That is what I call performance-time sound processing.

Spring Swing 2009 at Dudley House

2009-03-31T17:55:00.001-04:00

The Spring Swing is a great dance night. It is happening this Saturday, April 4th, in Dudley House, Harvard University's Graduate Students' House!

Come at 8:30 for the dance class, and from 9:30 on, you will dance to the sound of the Dudley House Big Band and its singers.

This year, our program will look like that:

All Of Me
And The Angels Sing
Basie Straight Ahead
Concerto For Cootie
Cute
I'm Just A Lucky So And So
I Will Survive
In The Mood
Jumpin' At The Woodside
Knock On Wood
Launching Pad
Mack The Knife
Main Stem
Pennsylvania 6-500
Sweet Home Chicago
They Can't Take That Away From Me
Tickletoe
When I Fall In Love

I really enjoy this event. It's a lot of fun to play, and the dancers have a great time. But most importantly, I love to take part to such a dance party featuring live musicians!

A Third Stream dinner

2009-03-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

Gunther Schuller, Theodore Antoniou, and Alan Lenarcic after the première of Viola palustris.

On Monday, March 23rd, Alea III performed my most recent composition, Viola palustris, in its "Composers' Workshop" concert (see announcement). After the concert, the conductor Theodore Antoniou invited all the composers to dinner. That was great to spend some time with this authentic music lover.

Gunther Schuller was excited about the piece and about the soloist Alan Lenarcic's playing. The first thing he told me was: "C'est une vraie composition du Troisième Courant!" ("It's a true Third Stream composition!") Then, he talked a lot with Alan about improvisation and saxophone players. Notably, he defended Charlie Parker's album Charlie Parker with Strings (result: I just ordered the CD).

Thank you Alan Lenarcic, Gunther Schuller, and Theodore Antoniou, for your enthusiasm for music!

Viola palustris - Premiere with Alea III

2009-03-19T14:19:00.001-04:00

I'm happy to invite you to the premiere of Viola palustris, my most recent composition. It is a concerto for an improviser and 14 instruments. Alan Lenarcic is playing the solo part with the ensemble Alea III.

Monday, March 23, 8 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center - 685 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston
Free admission

The concert features new works for large ensemble by talented young composers from around the world: Brian Buch (USA), Jean-Francois Charles (France), Phivos-Angelos Kollias (Greece), Mary Montgomery Koppel (USA), Michael Maganuco (USA), John Muniz (USA), Ilias Nikolaidis (Greece), Tolga Tüzün (Turkey).
The conductor is Theodore Antoniou.

Program notes

I finished writing the program notes last week. Here they are:

Viola palustris was inspired by the Alpine Marsh Violet, a perennial forb of the genus Viola. This flower inhabits moist meadows and marshes. It is the feast of the Fritillary butterfly.
Viola palustris is a concerto for an improviser with a 14-instrument ensemble. Tonight's performance features Alan Lenarcic on tenor saxophone. I have played with Alan for several projects, including a live performance of a 70-minute score to the movie "The Man with the Movie Camera". I am thrilled to work again with him on this creation.
Viola palustris is dedicated to Gunther Schuller.

First page of the score

Open Rehearsals

Come to hear and see how this new music is prepared for performance:

Friday 3/20, 9:30 am - 2:30 pm (Viola palustris at some point between 11:30 and 1:30)
Room 171, 855 Commonwealth Avenue
Saturday 3/21, 3:00 – 8:00 pm
Room 167, 855 Commonwealth Avenue

Hyper-systemic Music - Jacopo Baboni Schilingi at Ircam

2009-03-12T11:27:00.002-04:00

Jacopo Baboni Schilingi is a composer, the founder of the Prisma group, and currently holds the position of composition professor at Montbéliard Conservatory. You are invited to the presentation of his book La musique hyper-systémique : Une réponse possible (link to amazon France):

Saturday, March 14th, 11am
Ircam - 4 place Igor Stravinski
75004 - Paris

François Nicolas will be moderating the discussion. Guests include Gian Franco Vinay, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Ernesto Napolitano, and Jean-Marc Chouvel, who will discuss with the author the propositions exposed in his work published by éditions MIX.

Music is a judgement

In the third chapter of the book, Jacopo introduces the 323 theoretical foundations of hyper-systemic music. Here are a few of them:

01 Music is a judgement.
05 A sound is a phenomena.
84 Memory and judgement are inseparable.
305 Art is free expression.

From Jacopo's 2007 project Crossborder (picture from Jacopo's web site)

Jacopo gave the book to all the members of the Prisma group. I got mine during our July 2008 Prisma meeting. Thank you Jacopo!

Fulbright Afternoon of Music 2009

2009-03-09T00:22:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, the Fulbright Association Massachusetts Chapter organized its annual Afternoon of Music. This relaxed event took place in Harvard Eliot House Library.

Amateur and professional musicians performed a colorful program including pop music, traditional music, classical music, contemporary classical music, and jazz. I brought a basic setup to perform a pedagogical and musical presentation with clarinet and live electronics.

Program

Maximo Gurméndez, piano, guitar, voice, sang in English and Uruguayan: Don't let the sun go down on me (Elton John) and Al otro lado del rio (Jorge Drexler)
June Park, piano, violin, performed a Haydn piano sonata, a new composition of hers "Nighttime Wanderer part 2", and a Korean song
I performed semi-improvised music with clarinet and live electronics (Max/MSP/Jitter on my laptop, an amp, here you go)
Cédric Hanriot, piano, invited Ben Powell, violin, to perform a Bill Evans standard and a Waltz of his own.
Carlos O. Mendivil-Anaya, piano, performed Astor Piazzola piano pieces and Milonga in D with Leslie Levi
For a spiritual ending, Leslie Levi, violin, performed Massenet's Méditation de Thaïs, accompanied by June Park

I was happy to put together the program and coordinate the artists. But most importantly, I was lucky to meet such great persons! Thanks to all of them.

Souvenirs, souvenirs

Here are two pictures of the 2007 Fulbright Afternoon of Music (I believe the pictures were taken by Agnes Erenyi). We were performing my composition Nigritella nigra for clarinet and string quartet, with Ariadna Rodriguez and Peter Deckers, violins, Sidney Solow, viola, and Blaise Dejardin, violoncello.

Composers' Un-Music Roundtable

2009-03-06T14:28:00.010-05:00

You are invited to the Harvard Graduate Music Forum's Sixth Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Music Conference! This Saturday morning, March 6th, I am moderating a roundtable discussion entitled "Un-Music". Guest composers are:

Lou Bunk, Brandeis University
Maxwell Dulaney, Brandeis University
Davide Ianni, Boston University
Adam Roberts, Harvard University

I'm looking forward to knowing which work in the repertoire represents best Un-Music for them.
What is your idea of the most "Un-Music" composition?

Pianist Seda Roeder plays Stockhausen & Lachenmann

2009-03-02T20:58:00.004-05:00

Seda Roeder is a young pianist whose repertoire extends "from Couperin to Stockhausen and music by selected living composers". She is currently a Teaching Assistant at Harvard Music Department, and a piano instructor at MIT.

Helmut Lachenmann and Seda Röder.
Picture from Seda Roeder's web site. Make sure you visit!

A couple of days ago, she made available live recordings of a performance at the Goethe Institut in Boston on December 5th, 2008. The archive includes Henze's La mano sinistra, Lachenmann's Ein Kinderspiel, and Stockhausen's Klavierstück IX. I just dropped her an e-mail to get the download password. To get the files, rendez-vous on Seda's Download page.

Seda Roeder plays Tolga Yayalar

Seda premieres In The Temporal Gardens by composer Tolga Yayalar on Saturday April 25th, 8pm, in Paine Hall, Harvard Music Department. Maybe I'll see you there!

By the way, Seda recently released a Mozart, Brahms & Berg CD. Listen to her, and support a young artist!

Garth Knox at Harvard - Catalyst online

2009-02-25T09:07:00.008-05:00

On Valentine's day, Garth Knox gave a great viola recital in Paine Hall, at Harvard Music Department.

My friend Edgar Barroso is the first composer to post a video of his piece. It is called Catalyst.

Listen to and download a mp3 version of the recording from Edgar's Catalyst web page.

The team of composers

During the dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, Edgar took a picture of all the composers. From left to right: Bert Van Herck, José-Luis Hurtado, Jean-François Charles, Tolga Yayalar, Adam Roberts, professor Hans Tutschku, soloist Garth Knox, Sasha Siem, Dominique Schaffer, and Edgar Barroso. Only composer Josiah Oberholtzer is missing from this shot.

Thanks Edgar!

Garth Knox - New Music for Viola at Harvard

2009-02-11T09:34:00.003-05:00

You are invited to the second Harvard Group for New Music concert of the year, starring Garth Knox. The concert is taking place on Saturday, February 14th, in Paine Hall, Harvard Music Building, at 8pm. Free admission.

The concert will feature new compositions for solo viola by Edgar Barroso, José Luis Hurtado, Josiah Oberholtzer, Adam Roberts, Dominique Schafer, Sasha Siem, Bert Van Herck, and Tolga Yayalar. For my part, I composed Lapalu, a new work for viola and live electronics. Last Saturday, I wrote program notes.

Program notes

Lapalu, for viola and live electronics, with interactive video art by Ean White

Lapalu was inspired by the Alpine Marsh Violet, a perennial forb of the genus Viola. This flower inhabits moist meadows and marshes. It is the feast of the Fritillary butterfly.
Lapalu is a chamber music work for Viola, Live Electronics, and Interactive Video Art. It has taken its present form after a fertile improvisation session with Garth Knox on October 13th, 2008, and several meetings with Ean White in the Fall. The interaction with both artists incited me to leave much freedom in the parts. I am glad that the work benefits from their talents for creation and improvisation.
Lapalu is based on a simple musical formula. To see sketches and excerpts from the score, visit my blog www.jeanfrancoischarles.com
Lapalu’s sister work is Viola palustris, a flugelhorn concerto. Alea III, a 15-instrument ensemble, will premiere the piece in the Tsai Performance Center, in Boston, on Monday, March 23rd.
Make sure you visit Ean White’s web site: www.incendiaryarts.org

Update

Feb. 12th. Well, the video won't be part of this first performance. But Ean and I will work on making that happen for another version of the piece. I'll let you know...

David Fiuczynski at Harvard

2009-02-04T16:25:00.001-05:00

I am thrilled to announce that the next guest of the Harvard Group for New Music Colloquium Series is Dave Fiuczynski. He is not only a virtuoso guitar player, but also a professor, a composer, a producer, and more.

I wanted him to be invited because he is a true creator of new music. He has been playing fretless and microtonal guitars for years. More importantly, he has incorporated microtonality in a contemporary music context, both in melodic and harmonic ways. For instance, listen to Moonring Bacchanal on this page: KiF Express. I strongly encourage you to listen to his most recent album, Kif Express on amazon. Here is an excerpt from the allaboutjazz review:

Kif Express places Fuze beyond cutting-edge, as a conceptualist of daunting capabilities and unwavering vision and one of the instrument's continuously consistent innovators.

Picture CC by Hiromi Uehara

Fretless Guitar with multiple colors

On this video on archive.org, check out when David explains how he plays with different sound colors: sitar, oud, slide guitar...

There is a nice picture of a 1/6th tone guitar in this thread on thegearpage forum.

Finally, here is an interesting interview, combined with concert excerpts. Forget about the microtones, enjoy the music!

Audio Freeze - From Melody to Harmony

2009-01-28T08:32:00.003-05:00

On my August 2008 post entitled A Free Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter, Alex asked: "I was wondering if you also put "Melody to Harmony" patch on line".

Good news, the patch is online! It is called 6-melody-to-harmony and free to download on this page: Jean-François Charles' Max MSP Jitter patches.

A multiple freeze

With this patch, you can freeze a note, then add other notes, thus creating a frozen chord. There is no limit on the number of notes that you can freeze: it doesn't take more resources to freeze 100 notes than 2. By freezing successive notes of a melody, you transform it into harmony, in real time.
This patch uses the Max MSP FFT capabilities, while spectral data is stored and computed within Jitter matrices.

Max 4 version of the patch?

Antonio commented "pity some patches are for version 5 only" ; that's right, some of the most recent patches are only compatible with Max 5 and later. For this "melody to harmony" patch, you can click and enlarge the picture below. You will see the whole patch and the [pfft~] sub-patch. You can make a new Max 4 patch by patching the objects you see in the image. All are standard objects are available in Max/MSP 4.6 and Jitter. Nothing is hidden. The black rectangles are [jit.pwindow] objects.

This is the Max 5 version. You can build a Max 4 patch from this picture.

13/60 - Play Along 3 - Energy and Multiphonics

2009-01-23T10:30:00.002-05:00

Listen to 13/60 on last.fm

One type of clarinet multiphonic is called "split tones". In the duet Play Along 3, I use the most common root pitch for split tones on the Bb clarinet: the lowest note of the instrument, a written E. The first time I played this particular multiphonic in concert was during the première of Javier Torres Maldonado's great piece Hemisferios Artificiales.
We created this work for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, and violoncello in February 2002 in Strasbourg. Ivan Fedele was the composition professor, and Armand Angster was leading the rehearsals. First, I had a hard time figuring out how to play this multiphonic sound, but in the end, the concert was great.

One breath

If you use this study in your teaching, it may be fun to play it in one breath. It may also be fun to watch this video of the fascinating trumpeter Raphael Mendez.
For the "one breath" section, watch from 3:03 on.

Your dedicated clarinet study

As Play Along 1 and 2, this étude is dedicated to Lionel Liebe, a distinguished musician of Les Jolis Rogers and a participant to the 60/60 composition project. Recording took place during Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm's Short Cuts concert.

To receive your own personalized minute of music, visit the 60/60 Frequently Asked Questions, and see how easy it is. Presents start at $1.37 (current price for used version of Amandla!)

Formula Composition in Lapalu

2009-01-16T18:28:00.002-05:00

I just finished a provisional version of Lapalu, a new work for viola and live electronics. In this composition, I used the musical formula technique.

Lapalu musical formula

Here is the manuscript of the Lapalu formula. You can read the four limbs of the formula, each inhabited by a particular musical character. I composed part of this formula after recording Garth Knox. I could then incorporate elements of his musical language. For instance, he ended the improvisation session with circular bowing, that he seemed to enjoy quite a lot: this is why I use this nice sound quality in the last bar.

First projection of the formula

On the next picture, you can see the how the Lapalu formula unfolds over the first section of the piece. In formula composition, musical material is not developed, but rather spread, unfolded. Each limb of the formula contaminates its character to the corresponding section. Each section contains one or more projection of the whole formula. Here, the first projection (first half of the "red" section) is not transposed, the subsequent ones are transposed.

The formula as a model for the large-scale form

At a larger scale, the formula is projected over several minutes. The "bend note" becomes a "Fall" section, that happens to be a "live electronics" solo.

Melody and harmony

In Lapalu, the harmony is directly derived from the melody. Or was the formula composed after the harmonic progression?

For more insight into formula composition, I recommend reading Karlheinz Stockhausen's presentation and analysis of his own music, for instance his Texte zur Musik, volume 5. And you may become convinced that Formula composition is just another version of total serialism.