This concert featured relatively older works written by women for performers–largely percussionists–with electronics. Featuring pieces by composers Norma Beecroft, Susan Frykberg and Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, the aim of the concert was to showcase previously existing works that have rarely been performed due to lack of technical documentation, poor preservation of media or obsolete technology.
Accordionist Matti Pulkki adapted Giacinto Scelsi’s In nomine Lucis for organ (1974) for accordion and electronics. The original piece features mostly long sustained notes on a pipe organ with half-pulled stops, which are used to create a microtonal effect. The goal behind the adaptation is to produce these microtones in an accurate and consistent way through electronics. The piece is an attempt to extend the acoustic accordion’s range and expressivity by electronic means, both through microtones and low drones, which do not exist on acoustic accordions.
The piece uses a custom made Max Patch which has two functions. First, it creates low drones by pitch-shifting a pre-recorded accordion drone. The drones are launched by a bluetooth pedal and controlled by a volume pedal. The volume pedal is used to fade the drones in and out. Second, the patch is connected to a microphone and transposes the acoustic accordion sound a quarter-tone higher in order to create the microtonal effect. The piece is performed with amplification, but the sound is unified and the goal is to create an illusion that all of the sounds emerge from the accordion.
Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire (1997) is a sound installation involving a wire stretched over a long distance, driven with a sine wave oscillator and run through a magnet. The magnet creates overtones that change dynamically based on the frequency of the oscillator and the tension of the wire.
For this performance, we used a 1960s-era sine wave generator kept at the University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio. Contact microphones placed at the bridges amplify the resulting sound. This performance was given on December 11, 2022 at MacMillan Theatre, University of Toronto.
In the early 1960s, Karlheinz Stockhausen began to explore the idea of using the microphone as a musical instrument by altering its position in order to manipulate amplified sounds.
This idea, combined with many experiments on the tam-tam hung in the composer’s garden, culminated in the 1964 composition Mikrophonie I for six players, tam-tam and electronics.
The work organizes players into two groups of three, wherein each of the three players shares a role in shaping the resulting sounds. Two players produce various sounds on the surface of each side of the tam-tam; two additional players use microphones to pick up sounds while manipulating the microphones; and two players located in the center of the hall control the volume and frequency of the sounds as they are distributed to four loudspeakers.
This process was described by Stockhausen as “three mutually dependent, mutually interacting and simultaneously autonomous processes of sound-structuring”.
This performance by the TaPIR lab is part of an ongoing research project by Tim Roth documenting the reconstruction process for works with obsolete electronics.