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Radio // New Music for Digital Keyboard
New Music for Digital Keyboard
Canzona (1988), 12m23s [excerpt]
CD: SNE (1989) SNE 556
  • piste@sne_556-1
    • 1
      Canzona (1988), 12m21s
      • Premiere: 1988, Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)

      The title refers to the early Renaissance instrumental compositions bearing this generic term to define simply ‘an instrumental composition.’ The piece keeps specific contact with its sixteenth-century ancestors through an extremely dense and ornate polyphonic style, an open continuous structure, certain expressive moods and twists, and the smiling recreation of sound colors and compositional resources of that musical epoch such as echo and pian e forte effects. Except for the use of wholetone and harmonic series tuning systems, the piece is fully microtonal in order to achieve the resulting timbres and textures. The microtunings, ranging from quarter-tone to thirty-second of a tone, are combined in either complex single color or multi-timbral blocks.

      Canzona was realized with a Yamaha DX-7II/E! keyboard synthesizer and a TX-802 synthesizer at Ireme studio in Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) in late 1988 and premiered shortly after in a recital of new music for digital keyboard I performed at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Canzona was first released on the compact disc New Music for Digital Keyboard, on the SNE label (SNE 556) in 1989. The present version has been remastered at Ireme studio in Vancouver in 1995.

      All pieces were produced and recorded at Ireme studio in Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), between June 1994 and February 1995 by Sergio Barroso assisted by Michael Maguire. Neuman and AKG microphones were used for recording the mixed pieces.

      piste@sne_556-1.1 oeuvre@14304
    • 2
      El Reposo del Fuego (1987), 16m14s
      keyboard controlled synthesizers, and tape
      • Premiere: January 31, 1988, Sergio BarrosoEn Torno a los Sonidos Electrónicos, Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico)

      To Sergio Barroso

      I visited Guatemala for six weeks in the summer of 1978. Soon after I arrived the earth shook, painting my face with fear. When Mexico City was devastated in 1985, I remembered the horror, anxiety and awe that I felt when the earth shifted, and I imagined the human, spiritual and material devastation such massive catastrophe leaves in its wake. These were the memories reawakened by Sergio Barroso’s request to create a piece for the 1988 Electroacoustic Music Festival in Mexico City. I began writing in this sensibility of fear, premonition, and arrested time. The music reveals itself as a book of short poems culminating in a violent and virtuosic section, temporally based on the Maya calendar, in which a sense of time-continuity contains violent upheaval. Order and chaos here coexist. The poetry, read by Antonio Urrello, was selected from poems by Pablo Neruda (Punta) and José-Emilio Pacheco’s El Reposo del Fuego (The Resting Place of Fire).

      [i-89]

      El Reposo del Fuego was composed at the Ireme studio in Vancouver (Canada) and at the Sonic Research Studio of Simon Fraser University (SFU) (Vancouver, BC). It was premiered on January 31, 1988 by Sergio Barroso at the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City. Scored originally for the Yamaha DX-7(E!), TX-7 and tape, the solo part in this recording is the 1988 version for DX-7II(E!), TX-802 and tape, realized by Sergio Barroso. El Reposo del Fuego was awarded the First Prize for electronic music and the Canada Council for the Arts Grand Prize for best overall composition at the 8th CBC National Competition for Young Composers (Ottawa, 1988).

      piste@sne_556-1.2 oeuvre@17624
    • 3
      Trajectoires (1987-88), 10m18s
      keyboard controlled synthesizers
      • Commission: Sergio Barroso
      • Premiere: January 31, 1988, Sergio BarrosoEn Torno a los Sonidos Electrónicos, Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico)

      Some simple paths, clearly traced with elements of surprise and unexpected detours, Trajectoires is a live electroacoustic piece in five moments for solo DX-7(E!) and TX-7 digital FM synthesis instruments. By choosing a limited instrumentation and a limited sonic world — one timbre per moment — the composition focuses on sonic gestures, the articulation and animation of each timbre. It is by playing and reshaping the initial sounds that each timbre reveals its very own gestures. In addition to the DX7 keyboard, velocity attack, key pressure, modulation wheel, and sustain pedal are extensively used, as well as the E! card detune and sound spatialization capabilities. In general, the timbres cover a wide register region — like a cloud of sound — rather than a narrow or limited sonic spectrum. The score is written in relatively traditional music notation, more to indicate performance gestures than pitches or precise time values.

      Trajectoires was composed for Sergio Barroso in the summer of 1987 and premiered by him in Mexico City at the Rufino Tamayo Museum on January 31st, 1988. The piece was awarded a mention in the live electroacoustics category at the 16th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France) in June 1988. A new moment composed in October 1988 at the Grame studio in Lyon (France) is incorporated to the piece which was released on compact disc (SNE 556) by the Société nouvelle d’enregistrement (SNE) (Montréal, Québec).

      piste@sne_556-1.3 oeuvre@17625
    • 4
      Soledad (1987-88), 23m45s
      piste@sne_556-1.4 oeuvre@17626

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