OTHER DIRECTIONS
Patrick Dorobisz
For virtual instrument (physical modeling), computer, piano and clarinet.
12'05
First Creation : Computer Music Festival Seoul - 1997
Music with no directions where the use of a sound which has been created in physical modeling characterizes the form.
The specific feature of this work lies in the use of a sound which has been created in physical modeling (virtual acoustics) with its writing, its life, and moments of time it lets us visit.
This is not a work which tells us a story in the traditional meaning of the word (theme/development), but a work without any definite direction, not a work which leads to a given point with an aim to achieve, but a work which shows us several directions , which shows us musical moments as well as moments of time.
On the contrary to western musics which always lead somewhere, with a definite time and speed, this work takes undefinite ways, explores them for a given moment and let the sound blossom till it dies away.
Then the work takes another direction, explores another sound section and lets us enjoy its musical time.
The whole of the work is conditionned by the concept of musical time to explore.
The "starting point which leads nowhere" in the thematic meaning is first associated to the expressivity of the sound material created in physical modeling and to its dialectic which keeps acting on the micro-structure of this new material.
Stemming from recent research on the type of synthesis used, it is evidence of a new musical generation where the electronic material is as lively as the timbre of a classical instrument.
The musical gesture found again through different controllers and more specifically through a breath controller gives the music all its expressivity, just as a flautist or another instrumentalist playing a wind instrument could.
This material is the guide of the composition, as it develops, it decides about directions to follow. It carries also along a clarinet, a piano and electronic sound materials in the exploration of a musical form.
Often underlied by sound continuums where here again time is off, as if suspended (absence of pulsations), the playing of the clarinet strives to follow it in areas where the breath becomes musical and where rythmic figures reappear only to join those of the piano, as the latter keeps on taking different directions too.
The contrapuntal writing for those two classical instruments and this virtual instrument remains difficult for the timbre of the clarinet or the one of the piano try to take a direction and to lead to a given point, as if these instruments were conditionned by their making. The main caracteristic of this work is therefore a timbre which little by little makes up a musical form where moments of time prevail, let themselves be explored and show another perception of it without however entering the contemplative mode.