Experimental and Electronic Music

(selected compositions)

LUDOSONICA (2015), a research project of the Hochschule für Musik, the Hochschule für Gestaltung and the Hochschule für Technik Basel (Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz – FHNW). I participated as developer of multimedia and sound content.

Mensuralia (2014, for Violin and Digital Support)

First performed by Oleksandra Fedosova at the Hochschule für Musik, Basel, Apr. 10, 2014.

In the early Renaissance, the practice of mensural canons consisted of creating a single melody that could be sung simultaneously by several cantors; each cantor would adopt different durations for each pitch, prescribed by mensural signs. This piece employs the modern technical possibilities offered by the electronic treatment of sound to render the ancient compositional practice of mensural canons in a new fashion, with the singers replaced by a digital support. Today’s technology allows us to recreate proper proportional canons per augmentationem and per diminutionem (i.e., proportionally increasing or decreasing the duration of the original sounds), free from limitations imposed by the notation and by the physicality of the singers. 

To create the canon, I prerecorded the motif played by violin at the beginning of the piece; these recordings were subsequently subjected to several iterations of stretching (downsampling) of the recorded sounds that produced melodic lines proportionally altered in pitch and duration with respect to the original. The resulting melodies, which have otherwise been only minimally processed, have then been recombined contrapuntally. The resulting “impossible” polyphony forms the electronic part of the piece. Over, above, or perhaps simply beyond the electronic layer stands out a melody played by the violin that develops the initial motivic material and dialogues freely with the fixed canon in the electronic part.

Venezia (2017, two-channel acousmatic)

(installation for the exhibition A portrait of Venice… at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University)

Soundscape realized by Sofia Gallotti at CamerAnebbia.

This composition is the fruit of a strict cooperation with the team of curators of the exhibition A Portrait of Venice: Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of 1500, held at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University between September and December 2017, led by Prof. Kristin Huffman Lanzoni. The music accompanied visitors during their exploration of Jacopo de’ Barbari’s iconic view of Venice and their experience of the multimedia-related material, developed in order to reconstruct the environment of the city at that time.

Klangliche Durchforschung (2015, two-channel acousmatic)

First performed at the Gare du Nord, Basel – January 15, 2015.

In this composition, I combined unedited recordings made at the Electronisches Studio Basel. These represent a large variety of percussion instruments and objects – rice flowing in a bowl, various gongs, rattles and bells, piano strings rubbed with horsehair, glasses tapped one against the other, glass harmonica, etc. The piece explores the dialectics between ‘natural’ harmonic sounds and inharmonicity. Formally, it is conceived as a long decay of sound after an outburst of spectral energy around minute one.