Paraphrasen / Solo 1

for piano and 4 channel tape (2008, ~15')
PP: Bilder einer Ausstellung - Raue Einstellungsbilder
Clara Frühstück, piano, conception; Florian Frühstück, video; Manfred Leirer, action painting
concert - performance, Landesgalerie Eisenstadt, 2008-08-29

Sound examples

tape part; Clara Frühstück, piano samples

Work description

The continuation of sounds of acoustic instruments into the electronic space has recently become one of my main interests. Before, I composed pieces for solo instruments and tape with processings of samples by granular synthesis (the composition of sounds out of tiny particles of a given material). Thereby I was interested in the discovery of novel types of sounds that one could also perceive as a further development of their instrumental roots. The aspect of experimental handling is also important to me when working with computer algorithms. The formal abstraction shouldn't be an entity hammered in stone but give the possibility to discover novelties during the experimental compositional process.
As Clara Frühstück suggested a concert around Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", I thought of a similar kind of working process at first. Then I realized that the intended formal integration of the instrumental-electronic interludes into the original sequence demands a slightly modified concept. The reference to the pictures should be perceptible, whereas the aspect of diversity in sound should be subordinate, more black and white. I opted for procedures in which I processed a few bars by Mussorgsky (recordings with Clara Frühstück) as algorithmically generated assemblages. Not grains of sand, but splinter and rocks from the original, were chosen by random algorithms, layered, repeated, slightly varied in pitch and tone color, spatialized. The aura of exaltation and enigma evoked by Mussorgsky still seems to shimmer in strange transformations.