Le 1er juillet 2017
de 14h00 à 14h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3201
Séance - Sonic Explorations: Microtonality, Spectralism, and Electroacoustic Music
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Landon Morrison
The music of Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas is often grouped within the loose generic bounds of spectralism, but the composer dismisses this characterization; instead, he embraces a rhetoric of autonomy that positions his work at the intersection of several compositional approaches. Recent scholarship supports this view, suggesting that Haas’s music is best understood as a dramatic confrontation between “clashing harmonic systems” [Hasegawa 2015]. Building on these observations, this paper shows how Haas stitches together a veritable patchwork of theoretical impulses in his recent endeavours in live-elektronische Musik. Detailed analyses of two pieces show how Haas deploys a relatively straightforward technical procedure—the reinjection loop, or the delayed playback of recorded material at variable speed—to juxtapose different modes of pitch organization, including twelve-tone equal-temperament, microtonality, and just intonation. In Ein Schattenspiel (2004) for solo piano, recorded material is played back at an accelerated ratio of 33/32, yielding a consistent quartertone system evocative of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s ultrachromatisme and espaces non octaviant. This overall tuning framework nests allusions to Giacinto Scelsi’s sound-splitting techniques and Anton Webern’s serialism. By contrast, in String Quartet No.4, materials are reinjected at different speeds (33/32, 17/16, 7/6, and 11/12), setting up alternating pitch relationships between the performers and live electronics: just-intoned harmonies clash with near-octave sonorities, twelve-tone melodies are harmonized with overtone spectra, and at times, indeterminacy throws the music open to chance. In these works, the reinjection loop sparks a conflation of historical memory as various strains of influence collide in a musical pastiche.
