sixEXonePENsevenSIONfour - fragments 6, 1, 7, 4 (2007)
Stéphane de Gérando
Piccolo, clarinets (sib and bass), keyboard (computer) version
/ Duration: 15' / Creation: 10/13/2006, Festival de l'Innovation et de la Création, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain of Toulouse, techniques 3icar / Director: Stéphane de Gérando
Gilles Brugos, flûte piccolo
Aurélien Cescousse, clarinette basse
icarEnsemble - Electronique : icarStudio
Extrait book and CD (2010) : ISBN 978-2-19160-01-7
Distributeur : librairies ‐ Les belles lettres, disquaire : Codaex ‐
Inactuelles Tschann Librairie
Composer and Editor : 3icar@3icar.com
The 6ex1pen7sion4 was a request by the French State for piccolo, trumpet, bass, percussions, keyboard and electronic, and was performed in Paris in 2006 by the 2E2M ensemble. I imagined this work apprehending pulsated time, asymmetric, with the possibility of slight variations, fragmented memory of material, unstable, always on the brink of rupture, fast paced and mischievous... Unlike the string trio, it was not merely a succession of isolated durations or slices of life defining the agogic of the work, but the challenge was to generate pulsa- tion irregularly paced yet linked in a continuous movement. Along with this initial intention I also wanted to use a mathe- matical curiosity which my uncle, André Gauthiez, had showed me while vacationing in Brittany. The process is simple: you randomly choose a series of four numbers; arrange them in descending order, and subtract the same four numbers arranged in ascending order; repeat until the final result, 6 1 7 4.
I was less interested in the calculation itself than with the implications: the relation between raw randomness (random choice of four numbers), a series of determined operations and converging results. As Messiaen would say, music is not numbers, yet the project became a series of constraints: creation of continuity within discontinuity, variation of the musical material based on a scarcely diversified process (4 numbers), invention of a global coherence of structure and time based on a system applied to the microscopic composition of sound (acoustic parameters and linked to the sound synthesis).
The creation of the work is mainly based on an initial virtual center. This center is represented by the time zero -- the start time of the piece. I would write going into the past while writing the future, all at once, these two states not being predetermined. Concretely speaking, on the original score, I would gradually revert toward the start of the piece (« reverse writing ») while carrying on its expansion at the same time, having no clear concept of the beginning or end since the origin of time would gradually disappear from my memory. The challenge came from the relation between the invention of micro and macro durations. The system seemed viable when locally applied. But musically controlling the expansion of the material seemed more complex. It was less the problem of purely combinatory logic (it was not that complicated to invent a « nested » combinatory) than that of renewing perception bearing the writing of memory. As the piece developed (the writing process was very slow) I felt compelled to analyze the existing sound matter (harmony, dura- tion, timbre, space...), to better prolong, diffract, or make it absent. The piece's duration blended with the duration of the writing process, resembling an endless labyrinth: the future was hindered by the analysis of the memory of an always unstable and evasive sound matter.
Oddly, since 2006, this work has been rewritten several times. There are currently various versions with distinct instrumental ensembles. Certain modified movements have become autonomous, like a convoluted work, as if the principle of expansion had naturally, and somewhat regardless of my voli- tion, spread to the existence of 6ex1pen7sion4. But the concept of expansion here is strange since the global coherence of the piece is not modified: it is as if the density of the musical mate- rial enabled me to write the same piece differently, simply by the transposition of the material to the rewriting of certain frag- ments, with a process of music contraction in pieces with a single instrument (filtering) or instrumental rewriting including technological aspects (real time / differed time, with or without electronics), like that first movement composed for bass clarinet with a « main track » portion created in 2008. [...]
Stéphane de Gérando
Piccolo, clarinets (sib and bass), keyboard (computer) version
/ Duration: 15' / Creation: 10/13/2006, Festival de l'Innovation et de la Création, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain of Toulouse, techniques 3icar / Director: Stéphane de Gérando
Gilles Brugos, flûte piccolo
Aurélien Cescousse, clarinette basse
icarEnsemble - Electronique : icarStudio
Extrait book and CD (2010) : ISBN 978-2-19160-01-7
Distributeur : librairies ‐ Les belles lettres, disquaire : Codaex ‐
Inactuelles Tschann Librairie
Composer and Editor : 3icar@3icar.com
The 6ex1pen7sion4 was a request by the French State for piccolo, trumpet, bass, percussions, keyboard and electronic, and was performed in Paris in 2006 by the 2E2M ensemble. I imagined this work apprehending pulsated time, asymmetric, with the possibility of slight variations, fragmented memory of material, unstable, always on the brink of rupture, fast paced and mischievous... Unlike the string trio, it was not merely a succession of isolated durations or slices of life defining the agogic of the work, but the challenge was to generate pulsa- tion irregularly paced yet linked in a continuous movement. Along with this initial intention I also wanted to use a mathe- matical curiosity which my uncle, André Gauthiez, had showed me while vacationing in Brittany. The process is simple: you randomly choose a series of four numbers; arrange them in descending order, and subtract the same four numbers arranged in ascending order; repeat until the final result, 6 1 7 4.
I was less interested in the calculation itself than with the implications: the relation between raw randomness (random choice of four numbers), a series of determined operations and converging results. As Messiaen would say, music is not numbers, yet the project became a series of constraints: creation of continuity within discontinuity, variation of the musical material based on a scarcely diversified process (4 numbers), invention of a global coherence of structure and time based on a system applied to the microscopic composition of sound (acoustic parameters and linked to the sound synthesis).
The creation of the work is mainly based on an initial virtual center. This center is represented by the time zero -- the start time of the piece. I would write going into the past while writing the future, all at once, these two states not being predetermined. Concretely speaking, on the original score, I would gradually revert toward the start of the piece (« reverse writing ») while carrying on its expansion at the same time, having no clear concept of the beginning or end since the origin of time would gradually disappear from my memory. The challenge came from the relation between the invention of micro and macro durations. The system seemed viable when locally applied. But musically controlling the expansion of the material seemed more complex. It was less the problem of purely combinatory logic (it was not that complicated to invent a « nested » combinatory) than that of renewing perception bearing the writing of memory. As the piece developed (the writing process was very slow) I felt compelled to analyze the existing sound matter (harmony, dura- tion, timbre, space...), to better prolong, diffract, or make it absent. The piece's duration blended with the duration of the writing process, resembling an endless labyrinth: the future was hindered by the analysis of the memory of an always unstable and evasive sound matter.
Oddly, since 2006, this work has been rewritten several times. There are currently various versions with distinct instrumental ensembles. Certain modified movements have become autonomous, like a convoluted work, as if the principle of expansion had naturally, and somewhat regardless of my voli- tion, spread to the existence of 6ex1pen7sion4. But the concept of expansion here is strange since the global coherence of the piece is not modified: it is as if the density of the musical mate- rial enabled me to write the same piece differently, simply by the transposition of the material to the rewriting of certain frag- ments, with a process of music contraction in pieces with a single instrument (filtering) or instrumental rewriting including technological aspects (real time / differed time, with or without electronics), like that first movement composed for bass clarinet with a « main track » portion created in 2008. [...]
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