Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

'Impulso (F=ma)' or 'Impulse (F=ma)' was especially composed for Ensemble Kompass (Freiburg, Germany) - Swaantje Kaiser (violin), Elena Ralli (pianoforte), Kang-Jung Sung (percussion), and Maximiliano Soto Mayorga (artistic direction) - and their 2020 'Insekten-Mikroludien' project. Conceptually, the work explores the integral relationship between 'momentum' and 'impulse,' which according to the scientific discipline of modern physics (from Ancient Greek: literally 'knowledge of nature') may be decoded as "the change of momentum of an object when the object is acted upon by a force for an interval of time." The Merriam-Webster Dictionary presents the following definitions for 'impulse': "1a: a sudden spontaneous inclination or incitement to some usually unpremeditated action; b: a propensity or natural tendency usually other than rational; 2a: a wave of excitation transmitted through tissues and especially nerve fibers and muscles that results in physiological activity or inhibition; b: the act of driving onward with sudden force: impulsion; c: motion produced by such an impulsion: impetus; 3a: pulse sense; b: the product of the average value of a force and the time during which it acts: the change in momentum produced by the force; 4a: inspiration, motivation; b: a force so communicated as to produce motion suddenly; c: incentive."

Work Details

Year: 2020

Instrumentation: Violin, piano, percussion.

Duration: 1 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Professional

Dedication note: Composed for Ensemble Kompass (Freiburg, Germany) – Swaantje Kaiser (violin), Elena Ralli (pianoforte), Kang-Jung Sung (percussion), and Maximiliano Soto Mayorga (artistic direction)

First performance: by Ensemble Kompass — 29 Dec 21. Institut für Neue Musik, Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:
Momentum and Impulse, Nikolai Borisovich Obukhov (1892-1954), Traité d'harmonie, tonale, atonale et totale (1947) Le temple est mesuré, l’Esprit est incarné for pianoforte (1952), bell ringing sequences, magic squares.