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Work

Axis mundi : for solo bassoon

by Liza Lim (2013, this version: 2012)

Axis mundi

$34.55

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Score

Axis mundi : for solo bassoon / Liza Lim.

Library shelf no. Q 788.58/LIM 1 [Available for loan]

Work Overview

Images came to me in a dream: I saw a dead tree with desiccated bark and as I watched, the cracks and hollows filled with insects and larvae. Birds began feeding and breeding until the whole tree was a singing mass of fluttering creatures.

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The symbol of the Axis Mundi as a central pole extending between Heaven and Earth can be found in many cultures and religions. One of the best known of these is Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree of Norse mythology, whose roots, trunk and branches connect multiple realms of existence. Similarly, in Siberian shamanic cultures, the world tree represents a kind of ladder between lower, middle and upper worlds. Symbolic representations of the tree in the form of a ceremonial staff, a column of smoke or the vibrations of a drum, act as a ritual axis enabling the shaman to enter into states of non-ordinary reality to communicate with animal spirits and other sources of power.

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Alban Wesly visited me in Manchester on 23 March 2012 to demonstrate the bassoon: the instrument is a long wooden tube that doubles back on itself, punctuated by a great number of holes and keys. The keys might be thought of as a quite complex 'management system' to resolve a natural out-of-tuneness but it was precisely the irregularities of intonation and colour in the bassoon that attracted my attention. Alban and I found a way of organising sounds which takes an 'inside out' view of the instrument: in thinking about each hole as a venting point governing the cycles of vibration inside the instrument, and then subtly changing the interaction of these vibrations by opening and closing parts of the acoustic chamber below the open hole, we arrived at a series of irregular scales. These scales are made up of differently sized microtonal intervals and changing 'behaviours'. There are tones expressed in distinct timbres from bright to dark to fuzzy, and complex multiphonics ranging from highly dissonant rolling tones and roaring frictions to consonant harmonies. Some of the sounds are highly localised, gloriously emerging from the bell at the top of the bassoon or circulating in quite specific regions of the tube. These sonic 'knots' inside the vibrating hollow tube of the instrument form the musical material of Axis Mundi. The breath of the musician travelling the hidden pathways across and through these knots activates the many voices of a 'singing tree.

Work Details

Year: 2013, this version: 2012

Instrumentation: Bassoon.

Duration: 9 min.

Dedication note: Dedicated to Alban Wesly. "Dedicated to Alban Wesly with whom I collaborated to develop the techniques and notational approaches used in the score"

Commission note: Commissioned by Ensemble musikFabrik.. Commissioned through Kunststiftung NRW

First performance: by Alban Wesly at "Fundsachen" (Studio des Ensemble musikFabrik) on 4 Mar 2013

Performances of this work

24 Jul 2021: at Liza Lim Portrait Concert (City Workshop). Featuring Andre Oberleuter.

30 Jul 2019: at new voices + membrane (The Ian Potter Southbank Centre). Featuring Elision Ensemble.

10 Sep 2017: at Ensemble Musikfabrik at Musikfest Berlin (Philharmonie Berlin). Featuring Ensemble musikFabrik.

18 Oct 2016: at Musikfabrik (WDR Funkhaus (Cologne, Germany)).

4 Mar 2013: at "Fundsachen" (Studio des Ensemble musikFabrik). Featuring Alban Wesly.

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