Seven Waves
Media: Music for flute and tape
Duration: 13'00
Date: 1993
Written for: John Wesley-Barker
Audio Extract
File Size: 93k Duration: 0'13
From a live recording, Birmingham 1993,
with John Wesley-Barker, flute.
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The flautist and the tape are speaking in the same language - a language made up of the sounds of the flute and the voice - but are saying completely different things.
Although the tape is made entirely from flute and voice sounds, it is essentially abstract, a landscape of sculpted forms, cold, and at times almost violently un-human.
The flautist explores this landscape for us, following a winding path of free material, almost improvisatory in character. In contrast to the tape, the flute part concentrates very much on the human qualities of performance. Many sections exhibit all-too human qualities of nervousness, panic and hysteria, with the flautist's voice being used to theatrical, almost melodramatic effect; whilst others are contrastingly calm and dreamlike.
Electronic amplification is used to 'zoom-in' on the flute, to reveal a secret inner world of breath sounds, clicking keys, and mysterious whistling tones. The live electronics similarly function as a kind of microscope, picking out elements of the flute part and magnifying them out of proportion.
Additional
Information
- Written for flautist John Wesley-Barker, and was premiered by him
- Premier performed with BEAST, as part of the rumours series, at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, in November 1993. (It is a recording of this concert that is heard here.)
- Performed with
BEAST at Edinburgh University in 1994.
- Won third prize
in the mixed category of the 1994 Concorso Luigi Russolo (Varèse,Italy).
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