Gib sie wieder - a warning commentary on resonance II

Beschreibung
"Two harpists perform in the piece: Rhodri Davies performs live on stage. The other harpist, Gabriela Mossyrsch, has been recorded performing in Vienna. Each of the two harps is tuned in a different microtonal scordatura.

While the ‘outside’ part moves from noise to sound, the ‘inner’ part develops into the opposite direction: from pitched sound (more precisely: feedback sounds) to noisy parts. There are two individual scores for the two harpists.

I want the two harps to merge into one sonic object. Here I use two vibration speakers placed directly on the soundboard of the harp on stage. The electronic track is thus filtered by the resonance of the harp. Resonance and live performance radiate together, and even interfere acoustically with each other in this setting.

I composed the soundtrack with recordings of the first harp, vocal recordings and further electronic sounds/noises. The text reflects the notion of ‘forced resonance’ and poses the question: Can a string resonate out of free will? Does sound need resonance? Is resonance always forced?

In both noisy parts, the inside playback and the outside performance, goose feathers are used to excite sounds from the harp’s strings. They play with the image conveyed by the song, the goose wanting to be free. Also, feathers have been used for hundreds of years to write and compose, or to pluck the strings of a cembalo.

The concept of a ‘remote’ feminine presence underlines the social implications of my compositional plan. Patterns of gender interactions pervade musical performance and the history of instruments, as well as music as such. In this piece, I work and play with this background noise from a feminist composer’s point of view.

The text was written during the composing process. Writing a text parallel to a composition is something I often do, it has become a practice for me. The texts I write parallel to the composing process are side chain of creativity, a source of further insights, and quite often they become part of the composition. They add the level of verbal communication, a composer’s commentary."
Pia Palme [2014]

Uraufführung
2014 - Huddersfield
Mitwirkende: Rhodri Davies (Harfe), Claudia Cervenka (Stimme) Pia Palme (feedback sounds & noises)
Veranstaltung: Opening concert of Beyond Pythagoras Symposium
Weitere Informationen: (playback via transducers directly on soundboard of the harp, no external amplification necessary)

Aufnahme
Titel: GIB SIE WIEDER - a warning commentary on resonance II
Plattform: Vimeo
Herausgeber: Palmeworks
Datum: 28. März 2014
Mitwirkende: Rhodri Davies (Harfe), Claudia Cervenka (Stimme) Pia Palme (feedback sounds & noises)