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piste@icmc_05-1
(Sun and Shadow… Ghosts over the Ring) This piece could have been called “the stealer of souls” — the tape part draws heavily on the guitar sounds that I produced for Francis Dhomont during an improvisation session. When I began to compose the guitar part, I found myself face to face with my own ego — but an “altered” ego, now refracted through the discourse of the electroacoustic composer.
At the bullring, the stands are divided into sections of sun and shade, “sol y sombra.” In Sol y sombra… L’espace des spectres, the guitar and the tape confront one another as matador and bull, two faces of a single combat. The shadows of Manuel de Falla, of Spain immemorial, fall over the arena and the stands in a light-and-dark pattern that shifts as the passionate duel between the tape and the instrument unfolds.
The guitar doubles back and quotes the tape, attempting to recover its own soul and break the spell, quickened by its traverse through the mind of the Other.
Catherine Ego, Arturo Parra [English translation: Peter Feldstein]
(Sol y sombra… El espacio de los espectros) Esta pieza hubiera podido llamarse “El ladrón del alma” — dentro de la cinta magnética se encuentran un gran número de sonidos que grabé para Francis Dhomont en una sesión de improvisación. En el momento de componer la parte de la guitarra, me encontré entonces frente a mi propio yo, pero un yo “otro”, enraizado en el discurso mismo del compositor electroacústico.
En la plaza de toros, las graderías están repartidas en dos mundos: sol y sombra. En Sol y sombra… L’espace des spectres, la guitarra y la cinta magnética se enfrentan como el matador y el toro, dos caras de un mismo combate. Por encima del ruedo y sobre las graderías de la plaza también se ciernen las sombras de Manuel de Falla y de la España centenaria, que al antojo de la danza-duelo de la cinta magnética y del instrumento se deslizan de lo claro a lo oscuro.
Buscando retomar su alma y conjurar el sortilegio, la guitarra roba sonidos de la cinta magnética, enriqueciéndose por esta incursión dentro del imaginario del Otro.
Catherine Ego, Arturo Parra [Traducción al español: Arturo Parra]
piste@icmc_05-1.5
oeuvre@13895
At the heart of the Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, south of Manchester (UK), turns a great iron waterwheel, the original driving force for the 19th century textile machines still residing within the buildings there. The wheel turns a large and resonant drive shaft, the sound of which can be heard rattling throughout the Mill, amidst a rich collection of other sounds. Various combinations of water power, steam, and electric engines now interact to drive the power looms and other metal and wooden machinery — remnants from the Industrial Revolution.
Inhabiting the mill is a sound world of great volume, vibration, resonance, rhythm, intensity and energy, water and steam, cogs and wheels, switches, belts, pulleys and spindles, steam pipes, groaning and straining machines, delicate threads and textiles. All of this gives rise to a very unique music that inhabits the Mill, the machinery, the floorboards, and the air, and much of it finds its way into Styal. Quarry Bank Mill is, however, only a starting point for this work. Taking the sounds I have found and borrowed from the mill (with some additional sounds of spools of thread and tearing textiles recorded in the studio), I re-shape and re-create a sound world, music, and place of my own imagining.
[viii-08]
Styal was realized in 2004 at the Electroacoustic Music Studios of The University of Manchester (UK) and premiered on October 15, 2004 during the MANTIS (Manchester Theatre in Sound) concert series in the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall of the Martin Harris Centre of The University of Manchester (England, UK). Thanks to the National Trust and the staff and volunteers at the Quarry Bank Mill and Styal Estate. Styal was awarded First Prize at the 6th Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo (CIMESP ’05, Brazil) and was selected in the Trivium Category of the 32nd Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art Competition (France, 2005).
piste@icmc_05-1.8
oeuvre@19884