Score
Astatine : for saxophone, accordion, cello & electronics / Paul Clift.
Library shelf no. 785.2414/CLI 1 [Available for loan]
Work Overview
I try to avoid consistently drawing upon the same sources as
reference materials; there have been long periods when I was
influenced by the textures of abstract expressionist art, or
Fassbinder, or Mayakovsky, or less obvious things, such as the
grammatical syntaxes of foreign languages. I am still fascinated
by these things and people, but am finding myself to be
increasingly influenced by less conventional notions, like
complex mechanical machines, studies of the behaviour of light,
or, in the case of this piece, the properties of exotic chemical
elements.
Astatine is the rarest naturally-occurring element on
earth; it comes into existence through the decay of heavier
elements, and itself decays away within anything from a fraction
of a second to a few hours; it is estimated that at any given
moment, less than a gram of it exists in the earth's crust. It is
therefore part of a process of the destruction of matter, of the
sudden entropic scattering of quantum energy which had laid inert
for aeons. "...only the allegory of the Empire remains." The
nature of this barely-more-than-hypothetical substance was, for
me, metaphorically rich when considered alongside the
evolution/decay of sonic material, both through the application
of various transformative processes within the piece itself and
due to the refractive distortion of musical entities in our
memory.
Work Details
Year: 2019
Instrumentation: Saxophone, accordion, cello, with real-time electronics (MaxMSP/stereophonic).
Duration: 13 min.
Difficulty: Advanced
Dedication note: "for Jonas, Karolina & Olivia"
Commission note: Commissioned by Trio Saetenwind.. Commissioned with the generous support of La Fondation Nicati de Luze
First performance: by Trio Saetenwind — 13 Sep 19. Musikfestival Bern, Switzerland
Performances of this work
13 Sep 19: Musikfestival Bern, Switzerland. Featuring Trio Saetenwind.
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