These works were made by students, class groups and composers in the six participating countries of the EU Culture programme “Composing with Sounds” project (2011-2013): France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
UNITED KINGDOM
Leshaun Blake-Rodrigues: Beautiful Things… (2:02)
Leshaun Blake-Rodrigues is 15 and has recently moved from London to Nottingham where she is a student at Trinity School. She is currently studying for GCSE’s as well as being an enthusiastic violinist playing in several ensembles. Beautiful Things….. is her first piece created using collected sounds and made using the CWS software.
“In this piece I started off by having a calm beginning that gets broken by bells and then it turns into loads of duplicated sounds. The end is the beginning backwards to show that everything is mended in the end.” This piece was created in a short series of sessions using Compose with Sounds software. Starting with a process of auditioning all the sounds in the „Kitchen“ collection Leshaun selected mostly ones with significant pitch content. The resulting piece makes much use of duplication as well as transformations by transposition to create a piece which has a kind of asymmetrical rhythmic character. Towards the end Leshaun and Duncan Chapman also thought about how it might make a great soundtrack to an animation sequence or even a dance performance.
Duncan Chapman: …but the kitchen sink (5’03) (DMU/MTI Commission)
… but the kitchen sink was created using the new software Compose With Sounds. In making this piece I set myself the restriction of composing something only using the most basic level of transformations available to try and find out what the possibilities of the new software were. All the sounds in the piece are the same ones that Leshaun from Trinity School in Nottingham has been using to create her piece and they were recorded by Andrew Hill with the intention of being a set of „interior sounds”, as a complement to his set of „exterior sounds“.
…but the kitchen sink opens with all of these played together in a chaotic „domestic explosion“ fashion which gives way to episodes of calmer music revealing the hidden sounds of everyday objects and culinary processes. Everything comes from the kitchen and eventually returns to it in the form of a sonic soup bubbling away quietly on the stove.
Duncan Chapman (1964) is a freelance composer, sound artist, educator and performer. He works regularly with many leading music organisations in Britain including The Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Royal Festival Hall, CBSO, BCMG, Wigmore Hall, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, BBC and Sound & Music. He is a frequent traveller to more exotic locations with projects and performances in Tokyo, Singapore, Budapest and throughout Europe. Current projects include leading the Fanfare project for the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, a large orchestral piece for the London Mozart Players, a commission for a trio with live electronics for BCMG and a participatory opera for the Sound Festival in North East Scotland based on collections of people’s favourite environmental sounds.
Year 8 of The Lancaster School in Leicester: Aether (2’51)
Aether is the result of a collaborative composition of year 8 of The Lancaster School in Leicester. In four “Compose With Sounds” workshops the pupils worked in groups (Air, Water, Earth and Fire) and composed the different sections of the piece with the help of workshop leaders Motje Wolf and Mark Cassidy. Each group received a different sound pack that contained sounds connected to the different elements. All sounds have been taken from freesound (http://www.freesound.org/). A complete list of references can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/cas65d5
Joseph Deeping: Paradox (2’47)
Both this work and the following one by Andrew Hill have been composed using a collection of Compose with Sounds ‘Soundcards’ (recordings) that were made in external locations, both urban and rural environments. A diversity of sounds was captured varying in semantic association and in sonic textural and gestural content.
Joseph Deeping (1999) is from Leicester. He plays guitar, drums, keyboard, mouth organ, is learning to play the church organ and hopes to study for a diploma in Music Technology.
Andrew Hill: Abstracted Journeys (4’59) (DMU/MTI Commission)
Abstracted Journeys was comissioned as part of the ‚EARS2‘ / ‚Compose with Sounds‘ project and was premiered in Paris at the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM), Akousma festival, January 2013. The work seeks to playfully explore the sonic textures present within audio recordings, transporting the listener on a surrealistic journey in sound.
The sounds were recorded in external locations around Liverpool and Leicester, before being transformed, edited and montaged.
Andrew Hill (1986) is a composer of electroacoustic music from the UK. He composes both audio-visual and acousmatic works, seeking to explore the beauty in everyday objects. He joined the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre in 2007 and has since completed his MA and PhD. He is currently working on developing content for the EARS 2 (ElectroAcoustic Resource Site) pedagogical project and teaching at Edge Hill University near Liverpool.
All schools workshops in the UK (Leicester and Nottingham) were led by Motje Wolf.
NORWAY
Hedda Martine Hall Westby & Efua-Maria Raknerud Aikins: Alt (er) mulig (2’41)
Hedda and Efua-Maria recorded their source material in NOTAM’s studios using everything from their own voices to the school books (!) Realising that everything is possible in terms of shaping the sound, they entitled their composition ‘Everything is possible / all sorts’.
Hedda Martine Hall Westby and Efua-Maria Raknerud Aikins are 5th grade students at the Tonsenhagen Primary School in Oslo.
Anders Tveit: Thick Wires (8’29) (NOTAM commission)
The title refers to the source material used in this piece – the „thick wires“ of the electric bass guitar and the sounds that these can produce. I explore the idea of challenging the traditional role of the bass guitar as an anchor in order to create textures and sonic events not readily associated with the instrument and its performance practices.
The source material is derived not only from extended techniques, but also from extra-musical sounds such as changing strings, string breakage, tuning/de-tuning, and magnetic pull from the pickups, among other things. Some of these sources are left „as-is“ and some are processed in a variety of ways. Thick Wires was realized in 2012 in Oslo, Norway, at Biermannsgården and at NOTAM (Norwegian center for technology in music and art).
Anders Tveit. (1977) has his background in improvisation, and works mainly with various artistic approaches to both bass playing and live electronics. The use of self-developed software for real-time processing plays a central role in the personal musical expression.
As a musician, he has worked with everything ranging from the international renowned Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Audun Kleive & Morten Qvenild, Jazz Quartet with Shannon Mowday, Pd-Conception to small pleasant ad-hoc improvisation duos. In addition to being a performing musician with numerous CD releases, he has composed electroacoustic music and has created several sound installations. Tveit is also one of the driving forces behind the Oslo-based electronic musician collective SkRR.
Students from Kringler-Slattum School, 6th grade: Vinterlyd (Winter Sound) ( 6’00)
The pupils made different field recordings of snow as well as recordings of a kalimba, a music box, cymbals and a singing bowl for this piece. They worked in groups of two, and all of the groups made different sections of the piece, with guidance and a rough structure provided by Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad. Each group worked with a limited number of sounds in order to see how many sound variations they can craft from one single sound. The main idea for the piece is to make a soundscape that reflects the sound of winter – and with the cold Norwegian climate, it should come as no surprise that this includes the sound of snow!
Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad: Sketches of Faust (6’30) (NOTAM commission)
Sketches of Faust is inspired by a work I made last autumn as a composer for a visual theatre performance of Goethe’s Faust. Working for the performance was quite engaging, and included making a good deal of sound material from recordings of glass, cymbals, singing bowls played with a violin bow, bubble wrap, handwriting on paper, voice and an egg slicer, sound material that was not fully explored in the theatre piece.
I have tried to work focusing on the darkness in the sound of pitched-down glasses in combination with the high frequencies of the percussion in order to make a contrasting soundscape that reflects the feeling of the staged performance, that is, a type of abstracted impression of it. As in most of my sound compositions I try to use very few source sounds and then develop them and also use panning actively to create some kind of movement in contrast to the static background and slow tempo that seems to be something I strive for in most of my music.
Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad (1978) is a singer, composer and sound artist living in Oslo. She likes to explore the quality of sound and music ranging from the pure acoustic to the amplified and extremely processed. During the last few years she has written music for dance and theatre performances in addition to making a sound installation with poetry and music. As a singer she works with voice and live electronics in the improvisation-duo Shhht! together with singer/composer Kristin Bolstad and is investigating new types of live performances of electroacoustic music as part of the duo Kaldestad/Tveit, together with musician and sound artist Anders Tveit.
Kaldestad is also vocalist in a brand new trio with guitar and the Norwegian folk instrument Hardanger fiddle, where she writes both music and lyrics. In this trio Kaldestad is not using electronics, but is working with different percussion instruments such as cymbals, singing bowls and xylophone in order to create soundscapes. Growing up in a family with a great interest in literature, and with her father being a poet, she is concerned with text, and often uses this as an element in her compositions.
PORTUGAL
Cooperativa de Ensino A Torre 4ºA: O Sonho (The Dream) (2’40)
While walking through city parks it became evident that for children that a significant contrast existed between the sound environment at the centre of the park and the one at the boundaries of the park with its roads and cars. The children then imagined a man falling asleep and dreaming of an ecological sonic experience while walking through a forest surrounded by a highway. This gave birth to this soundscape composition.
Agrupamento de Escolas Elias Garcia da Sobreda da Caparica 5ºB: Crepúsculo (Twilight) (1’17)
The Composing with Sound workshops at this school took place within the framework of the music classroom. Instrumental sounds and vocal sounds were those easily available and so we made recordings and then isolated them into sound objects with which they built this piece.
Cooperativa de Ensino A Torre 4ºB & Escola de Música do Conservatório Nacional 5ºB: Salpicar (sprinkling) (4’16)
This is a collage of small moments from various pieces made by the participants of the Composing with Sounds workshops. It is a powdering of moments and the sprinkling of sounds with sounds made by children.
Jasmim Mandillo: Palavras Trocadas (Switched Words) (1’24)
Cutting and splicing of sentences fascinated Jasmim. She found that words were very special sound objects gathering simultaneously abstraction and meaning and thus she asked to make a piece in which she play with this ambiguity. She chose a few sentences about books written and read aloud by children that were recorded at Miso Music Portugal’s workshops. (Read further regarding these workshops in the following text related to the piece Notes on Books by Miguel Azguime).
Jasmim Mandillo, age 10, is a cello student in the first year at the secondary school of the National Conservatory of Music 5ºB, Lisbon. She also loves to paint and sew.
Miguel Azguime: Notes on Books (7’31) (INA/GRM commission)
At the workshops made at Miso Music Portugal and in connection with the teacher, João Losada of A Torre elementary school, the children reflected about what books can be, the sounds that books can produce and of the voice reading aloud. Many recordings of readings of sentences written by and spoken aloud by the children were made. Thus the voices of children and the sound of books were the sound material used in this piece.
Miguel Azguime (1960) is distinguished for his work’s originality and diversity. Azguime musical world reflects an approach that relies on his multifaceted capabilities as composer, performer and poet. Together with Paula Azguime, he founded the Miso Ensemble in 1985, a duo recognised by the public and by the critics alike as one of the most important Portuguese contemporary performing groups. Azguime’s music excels on aesthetic innovation and freedom. His works reveal an intensively emotive mixture of acoustic instrumental writing and electronics in which his talent reveals its most innovative qualities. The energy and rhythm of his inventive music give life to highly melodic phrases, in which “melismas” play an essential role. As composer, poet and performer, he relentlessly crosses the boundaries between music, text and drama, hence shaping new ground in contemporary music, redefining music theatre and opera into what he calls as ‘New Op-Era’. Not only lyrical but also engaged, his polymorphic works amaze and attract both lovers of music and the ones new to it. Besides his creative activity he his actively involved in promoting Portuguese new music as artistic director of numerous projects as well as in his research. In 2006 Miguel Azguime was DAAD composer in residence in Berlin, and since then he has lived and worked in Berlin and Lisbon. He is the 2008 Prize Winner of the UNESCO’s Music Theatre NOW Competition for his opera, Salt Itinerary.
The Composing with Sounds project in Portugal was supported by: the Ministério da Educação e Ciência / Direcção-Geral da Educação and the Geothe Institut in Portugal. Miso Music Portugal is funded by the Secretaria de Estado da Cultura/Direcção Geral das Artes, Camões Institut, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Simao Costa: DeCerto SerraMu (15’27) (DMU/MTI commission)
It is a desert, simultaneously beautiful and sad. It is a song of regret, one which multiplies into one thousand. It is a scream of despair, explosion and implosion. It is the simple which became dense and it is the reborn love. It is one dedicated to the love of my life Ágata.
NB: This piece involves the use of very low frequencies throughout and should be played on high-quality loudspeakers or headphones; otherwise, much of it is likely to remain inaudible.
Simão Costa (1979) lives and works in Lisbon as a musician, composer and pianist. His work links objects / instruments and electronics / code, materialising into sound pieces that involve multiple media and forms (concerts, installations, cross-disciplinary). Since 2004 he works on his own and in collaboration with musicians, visual artists and performers. He also designs and implements educational projects that relate technology to creativity. His work has been presented in Portugal, Spain, France, Poland and Holland … always trying to remain human.
GREECE
Eirini Panteliou: Dawn (4’37)
Giorgos Pantelios: Improvised Study (3’41)
Kostas Chrysikopoulos: Sound Play (2’15)
Eirini (1997), Giorgos (1997) and Kostas (1997) are all students at the Music High School of Corfu where, in addition to their regular school curriculum, they also have the opportunity to study music. Andreas Mniestris and Katerina Tzedaki, along with Yannis Kyriakoulis, have first taught a group of students at the school. After this the three students who continued to compose these pieces worked with Andreas at the studio of the Music Department at the Ionian University in Corfu.
Katerina Tzedaki: Passing Through (2’57) (NOTAM commission)
This composition is about the flow of time as a potentially changeable quality of experience. I created a sound library (44 sounds in 5 categories) using both environmental recordings and transformed sounds. Although the sound library was quite a bit larger (intentionally), I finally managed to use just a small part of it. The recordings used here are from Corfu: the bells of Saint Spyridon on the 12th of April 2009, one of the innumerable brass bands passing through its narrow streets (same date), cars passing early Sunday morning – and from Crete: water flowing in Kourtialiotiko Gorge and birds. Amplitude envelopes, asymmetrical delay, transpose, filtering, editing and superimposition were the tools that ‘worked’ best in this context.
Katerina Tzedaki (1964), born in Rethymno, studied music in Athens (1984-1991) with I. Ioannides, S. Vasilleiades and D. Kamarotos and has been coordinator of the Computer Music Lab of the programme of Psychoacoustics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki IPSA (1994-2000). She completed her studies in electroacoustic music composition at City University, (MA, 2002) and at De Montfort University (PhD, 2012) with Simon Emmerson. She is a founding member of the Hellenic Association of Electroacoustic Music Composers (HELMCA http://www.essim.gr) and of the Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology (http://www.akouse.gr). Her music has been presented nationally and internationally. She is currently teaching at the Department of Music Technology and Acoustics at the Technological and Educational Institute of Crete.
Andreas Mniestris: Free Associations: The ”Jungle” (3’43) (ZKM commission)
The piece is based on the voice of Greek poet Kostas Varnalis reciting his very famous poem “The doomed”. It is setting out towards an uncharted and rather dismal destination, pretty much, as it seems, like the European dream.
Andreas Mniestris (1956) was born in Piraeus and studied physics at the University of Thessaloniki and electroacoustic music and recording media at the Université Paris VIII and at Mills College. Since 1995 he lives in Corfu where he teaches at the Music Department of Ionian University as Associate Professor of Electronic Music Composition and where he directs the Music Department’s Electroacoustic Music Research Laboratory (EPHMEE). He is a founding member of the Hellenic Association of Electroacoustic Music Composers and the Hellenic Society of Acoustic Ecology having served on their Board of Directors for many years.
FRANCE
Florian Sulpice: C’est Wiizzz!!! (3’45)
“This music is my first electroacoustic music composition. After a few learning exercises, my tutor gave me a number of sounds in order to create this short study. Step by step, I learned how to create and record new sounds that I added to my composition.”
Florian Sulpice (1997) is a student at the Collège Victor Hugo in Bourges. Alongside his academic curriculum, he has been able to allowed to study piano work in the sonic arts workshop at the Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Bourges. Passionate about working with sounds, he is already constructing his own home studio.
Roger Cochini: Retour aux Sources (5’28) (INA/GRM commission)
At the Consevatoire in Bourges, Cochini leads both adult and children’s courses in sonic arts. “With the arrival of the Compose with Sounds software, I decided that this was the time to observe the work of these young students. I only used sounds in this piece that were generated by the children as part of their activities related to inventing sounds and composing with them. This was an exercise that was quite a bit more perilous than I had imagined. Working with young musicians sends you back to the basics, to the sources of music. Simply listening to this ‘space’ nature/culture, it’s the children who give adults homework exercises.”
The progression of this short entertaining piece is organised in four movements chained together, voluntarily expressed in childish language to communicate the way in which children experience this activity: 1) On has the right to play with sounds; 2) Sometimes it’s hard work!; 3) But we know how to make it live; 4) And if we want to, we can progress.
Roger Cochini (1946) studied music, science and technology. He attended Pierre Schaeffer’s and Guy Reibel’s classes at the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur in Paris. He was a member of the GRM in the 1970s and the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges (later IMEB) for decades. He has presented concerts, talks, publications and tours internationally.
Students of the Lycée Dorian, Paris: Première année de lycée .wav, .mp3 – 4’00
Students of the Lycée Brassens, Bourges: Concrètement feminine (Concretely Feminine) (4’30)
Nathan Schwarz: Un dialogue intérieur (3’22)
A man turns out to be schizophrenic; he speaks to himself ‘internally’. Each of his personalities is accompanied by a soundtrack each of which is distinguishable from all others. It is a form of travel through a spirit that is different from ours; one from which one becomes perplexed.
Nathan Schwarz (1997) was born in Paris and is a student in 2nd year of secondary school. He has been trained in musical studies including clarinet (his 9th year) at the Conservatoire in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
Éric Broitmann: Nocturne (7’30) (commissioned by INA/GRM)
This piece is like a transcription of a number of moments during one night. I have decided to keep this note short in order to allow everyone to be free to use his or her imagination whilst listening.
Éric Broitmann (1972) is a composer and performer of acousmatic music. He followed a course in electroacoustic music with Roger Cochini at the Bourges Conservatoire (where he obtained DEM degree in 2004). This study was followed by a period under the guidance of Denis Dufour at the CRR (Regional Conservatoire) in Paris from 2007–2010. His works have been performed at various events and international festivals: Ina/GRM, Futura, Synthèse Festival, at the Espace du son at Musique et Recherches (Brussels), broadcast on France Musique, at the Palais de Tokyo, Elektrophonie Festival, at the Folliesphonies and the Forum de la Jeune Création (forum for youth creativity). He received a special mention for his piece “Rouge Sang” (red blood) at the Destellos Competition in 2010. Parallel with his activities as composer and performer, he organises events, concerts, residencies and workshops. He also is involved with live productions. He is currently collaborating with Motus, Ina/GRM and the artist collective Adelaïde.
GERMANY
Christoph Ogiermann: ПИКНИК am Wegrand: some arts by remembrance (1a abgerichtete Würfe) and by limits of programs (8’57) (ZKM commission)
Electronic music in 2 parts
First part (remembrance): Documentary music. A choreographic reconstruction of a particular evening, conducted in the studio space. The electronics add some ‘commentary’. The situation – at home, evening: the dishwasher is running (represented by an anolgue SynLab modular synthesizer in the reconstruction), my daughter (19) works at the computer, a knock on the window, her boyfriend arrives, speechless, she keeps typing at the computer, heavy tension in the room, singular sentences: “I have to go”, “Can You give me the clothes?”, he leaves the room. Tension without relief.
Meanwhile I am reading in Gorki’s second version of “Wassa Shelesnowa”: “Rachel: (…) Kolja wird in diesem Haus aufwachsen mit Balalaikas und Gitarren, mit zu fettem Essen, mit dem halbbetrunkenen Prochor Chrapow und mit zwei jungen Mädchen – die eine zurückgeblieben, die andere ein bißchen zu zynisch.
“Wassa Borissowna, ich kenne Ihre Klasse hier in Rußland und außerhalb – es ist eine hoffnungslos kranke Klasse! (…) Sie leben beherrscht von den Dingen, die Sie nicht geschaffen haben. Sie leben in gegenseitiger Verachtung, in Haß , und niemals fragen Sie sich – wozu Sie leben, für wen Sie dasein können…”
There is a TV play version by Egon Monk in which the actress playing Rachel mostly remains motionless and silent in one corner of the stage area. These visual impressions cut and edited back to back could be thought of as accompaniment for the piece.
Second part (limits of programs): First part repeated. What happens when one sets the volume clearly above 0 dB as a rule? How does the software programme react? How the sound card? What does the program do when ‘bouncing’, what do the speakers do? … What does it mean when the tension of the quasi-silent domestic scene of part one is over-amplified by way of the instruments of reconstruction? Especially the electronic comments featured in part one now clearly show their ‘character’. Block: tension, without relief (?).
Christoph Ogiermann (1967). He was born in Bad Pyrmont/Germany. Starts to compose music in 1990 following a stipulation by Erwin Koch-Raphael. He studied composition at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen with Younghi Pagh-Paan, Nicolas Schalz and Georges-Nicolas Wolff and works in recitals as a singer, playing violin and piano in ensembles of improvised and contemporary music.
Ogiermann spent a research speriod at the Archivio Luigi Nono/Venice. He was guest lecturer for composition and improvisation in Pitea/, Sweden. He was invited as composer in residence at the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik Graz, the Studio für Elektronische Musik of the Technischen Universität Berlin and at the Experimentalstudio des SWR. He has been invited as lecturer for composition and electronics to Edinburgh and Queretaro (Mexico) and won the “ad libitum” prize for composition granted by the Winfried Böhler Kulturstiftung Kunstpreis Musik 2012 of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin. He is co-founder of the Konzept- und ImprovisationsQuartetts KLANK (Bremen); member of the der projektgruppe neue musik bremen (pgnm, Bremen) and in the artist collectives TONTO/ Graz and Stock 11; he is founder and artitstic director of the series REM für elektronische Musik in the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Bremen.
Lukas Hoge Julius Jakob & Mats Lukas Böhling: Das Dilemma (11’27)
Bela Wiener: Final Emancipation (4’18)
During the beginning of the piece the subjective consciousness (also to be viewed as a character in a narration) witnesses a tenacious, slowly developing start, gradually changing into a continuous (routine-like?) cycle. This cycle abruptly stops at a certain point in the piece and points to the Unexpected. What this Unexpected, this Unknowing is or can be remains open but, one welcome guess would be that this stands for the departure, for a merely ironic and fast ending of life. The dying conscious being (does our consciousness die too when we die?) submits itself to the Void, the Silence, the Sleep to find itself again thereafter. A deep breath of the will to survive, a last profound moment of letting go. Now emancipated, the being softly subjects itself to that which awaits every individual: the transformation into a new form of consciousness, into another sphere. This sphere seems completely irrational and coded, not to be understood with the instruments of our logical thought and our present time. The question remains: Does the burrow lead further down or does an absolute end impend upon us?
Bela Wiener (1995) has been attending the Helmholtz Gymnasium Karlsruhe, Germany since 2006.
“My piece consists of sounds and noises that I recorded at home or whilst commuting. I have used a good deal of distortion to disguise the original sources that only shine through the overall sound (e.g., a sound made by my cat, the steamy hum of the kettle, a piano tone). The guitar part and the short melody are contributions made by a friend of mine. To me, the whole piece is reminiscent of typical April weather, starting sunny and bright and slowly becoming darker and building up to a thunderstorm which only calms down towards the very end when the piece falls back into harmonic mode.
Maike Wolff (1997) attends the Helmholtz Gymnasium Karlsruhe. In music she is a pianist who also participates in a choir.
Luís Antunes Pena: Hi-Fi Noise Study – Pecking Chickens (5’28) (ZKM commission)
This piece is a study that works with the unheard, the uncontrollable and uncertainty in sound. All recordings for Hi-Fi Noise Study were done to emphasise these aspects of sound: extremely amplified recordings using normal microphones; or the use of contact and induction microphones that capture what we usually do not hear. These were some of the means used to get to the noise of sound.
Luís Antunes Pena (1973) was born in Lisbon and studied at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa wth António Pinho Vargas and in Germany with Nicolaus A. Huber, Günter Steinke and Dirk Reith at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen and at the ICEM (Institut für Computermusik und Medien). He also was inspired by Emmanuel Nunes in Lisbon during the Gulbenkian courses and from Gérard Grisey at IRCAM.
His compositions result from the intensive work on computer-generated structures based on the development of his own computer tools, reflecting his interest in new forms of sound and especially of rhythm through the electronics.
His music has been performed all over Europe and the USA. He won several composition prizes and his music has been distinguished at many international festivals. This year a portrait CD with new pieces for solo instruments and small ensembles with electronics will be presented. Upcoming projects include new pieces for Ensemble Remix (Porto) and asamisimasa (Oslo).
Pablo Quass: MASCHINENhallen (5’25)
Permanent booming machines sound in this composition as well as particularly quiet, perhaps even unusual sounds of machines which I place into a musical contexts – Maschinen hallen in MASCHINENhallen.
Pablo Quass (1995) received his first cello leson at the age of 4 and started composing at the age of 6. He received several prizes at a number of competitions such as Jugend Musiziert (youth plays music) and attended master courses led by Prof. N. Eppinger, Prof. G. Schiefen and Prof. Wen-Sinn Yang. Since late 2012, he receives cello lessons from Yves Savary (solo cellist of the Bavarian State Opera, Munich). He has had composition lessons with Martin Wolfrum and Prof. Kai Westermann before eventually starting to study at a special youth programme for composition in Prof. C. Johannes Walter’s class at the conservatoire of Stuttgart. He received an encouragement prize at the first composition awards for adolescents at the Munich Conservatoire and won the Bundespreis für Komposition 2013.
Evelyn Ruf: Wasser Fragezeichen (6’44)
The idea behind this piece was to prick up the listener’s ears by using breaks and surprise effects together with quiet elements. The framework was to build the piece up using water sounds.
Evelyn Ruf (1995) has taken piano lessons since the age of 7. She sings in the school’s chamber choir and is part of the composition study group. She has received awards at the Jugend Musiziert (youth plays music) competition.
Leon Scholl: Kombination sub- und objektiver Impressionen Karlsruher Sehenswürdigkeiten (6’30)
“The piece is working on the one hand with sounds, which were recorded at objectively alleged “important” places in Karlsruhe (like the main station, the market place, the zoo) and on the other hand with sounds ‘subjectively’ representing Karlsruhe, meaning that they have a personal value for me, such as my school, the meadow in front of my house or the churches, in which I often go to practice the organ. That is the framework of my piece.
“Subsequently I went on and processed interesting sounds at the computer and added an extra woods atmosphere, standing for the green areas in Karlsruhe, as well as a flute, standing for the cultural significance of the city. Overall the piece lasting approximately 6 minutes can be subdivided into seven parts, whereby different motives are introduced in the first half which are then treated in the second half.”
Leon Scholl (1996) is in class 10 and makes a lot of music. He has played the violin for 11 years and piano for seven years at the Baden Conservatoire. For 2-1/2 years he has been learning the pipe organ, taught by Christian-Markus Raiser. He is a member of several ensembles and in 2004 played for the first time in a children’s orchestra. For six years he has been playing for the chamber orchestra at the conservatoire. Last year he became concertmaster of the school’s orchestra II. In addition he has been composing for eight years and completed more than 100 short solo and orchestra pieces. In 2009 one of his canons was premiered at the Staatstheater in Karlsruhe and last year he was awarded third prize at a composition competition forming part of the European Culture Days.
Luca Hladek: Submarine in Space (6’11)
This piece is based on a self-recorded deep piano sound and the sound of a snare drum.
Luca Hladek (1997) is in the 10th grade. He has been playing the saxophone for six years and is performs with it in several bands.
Hans-Jochen Stiefel: annäwäch (In spite of everything) (4’13)
annäwäch is my first attempt to make a composition of acousmatic music. „annäwäch“ is a dialect expression from Hohenlohe, the area where I was born, meaning “in spite of everything”. This “in spite of everything” does not refer to the content of this sound étude, but instead to the difficulties I had during the development of my piece due to my little knowledge with the handling of the pitfalls of computers and software.
With regards to content, “annäwäch” is the attempt to take the recorded sounds out of their original context and to alienate them to the point of their losing their clarity but not their aura and affective impact. Furthermore the design of transformations plays a decisive role.
Hans-Jochen Stiefel teaches music at the Helmholtz Gymnasium Karlsruhe. Furthermore, he is supervisor of the philharmonic choir, its orchestra I and the study group, “New Music and Composition”.
Publications
This page includes a list of publications that concern or complement this Compose with Sounds site.
A book has been written that uses CwS for its activities and complements the goals of the EARS 2 site:
Leigh Landy (2012). Making Music with Sounds. NY: Routledge.
A key article on the project:
Leigh Landy, Richard Hall and Mike Uwins (2013). „Widening Particulation in Electroacoustic Music: The EARS 2 pedagogical initiatives:. Organised Sound. 18/2: 108–123.
Further publications:
Leigh Landy. „Sound-based Music 4 All“ (2009). in Roger T. Dean, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 518–535.
Jøran Rudi (2012). Two educational softwares for composing electronic music: Objectives, design and practice, La Creazione Musicale dei bambini e degli adolecenti nell’era digitale – riflessioni, recherche, esperienze, Roma, Radio Vaticana Oct. 26 – 27, 2012.
Jøran Rudi and Palmyre Pierroux (2009). „Framing Learning Perspectives in Computer Music Education“. In Roger T. Dean, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 536–552.
And there is the limited edition double CD that was produced as part of the EU Culture „Composing with Sounds“ project. These pieces and all others composed as part of that project can be found on the page linked above: „EU project compositions.“
#Tidsskrifter“
