14/04/2012

h.17 Auditorium San Fedele

Spaces, Words and Sound – The Work of Annette Van De Gorne

Annette Vande Gorne
Crise (extract from Folie de Vincent) (1984) 5’ stereo
music for the piece Sulphur Sun by Philippe Marannes, for analog synthesizer VCS3

Figures d’espace (2004) 12’43 stereo – Vide et Plein
Texture
ritournelle 1
Vagues
ritournelle 2 – Contrastes
ritournelle 3

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Est (2003) 8’, octophonic

Yawar Fiesta (2006-2012) 30’
Acousmatic opera on a libretto by Werner Lambersy (estratti), 7.1

Acousmatic interpretation: Annette Vande Gorne

Annette Vande Gorne proposes four works as a synthesis of her musical language. Traditionally, music is an abstract and at the same time expressive art. The Belgian composer tries to introduce expressiveness into technological music. Even the space becomes an essential element of her composing, precisely an abstract and expressive element
The piece Crise, composed on the occasion of two theatrical performances, “Enrico IV” by Pirandello and “Sulfur sun” by P. Marannes on Van Gogh, expresses different states of madness through the characters: cry, revolt, illusion, escape, confusion, etc. . The technical means are limited, the material poor and bare. Everything lies in the almost improvised gesture, felt as a psychological identification with the different states of the characters. The musician becomes an actor. Figures d’espace, dedicated to Claude Lenners, comprises seven parts and deals with the theme of space. Each part requires a profound involvement of the interpreter at the console, a certain virtuosity. The piece was conceived as an instrumental gesture, in reference to spatial figures that condition the gestural response of the performer. Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Est is a funeral passage for the civilian victims of ideological-economic wars and refers to Debussy’s rich and surprising writing. For example, one can hear repetitions of small fragments often transposed, with or without variation of speed or colored at each apparition, dynamic contrasts, abrupt tempo changes, oppositions of sound masses, of movements (as in Debussy in: Dialogue du vent et de la mer, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest, or Jeu). Furthermore, there is a particular relationship with nature as a model and generator of energetic movements and sound spectra. The musician tries to make a transposition of the energy that agitates natural phenomena. Debussy too becomes here a model of energetic and musical attitude, stylistic reference and pretext for dialogue. The piece sometimes allows some reminiscence of Debussy to pass. Perhaps, a hundred years later, Debussy would have participated in the electroacoustic adventure, thus integrating space as a musical parameter.
More than an electroacoustic work, Yawar Fiesta is the dramatization of a text made dynamic by means of spatial figures. Technological music finds a link with the tradition of bel canto. The libretto refers to the ritual of the Greek tragedy, conflicts emerge, similar to the internal ones, to the social ones, symbolized by the struggle between a condor and a bull during the blood festival in some Andean villages. Like the conflict between poverty and the power of money, or the one that opposes desire to the will to power. The leader of the Indians personifies spiritual wisdom whose strength always wins over material, political and economic contingencies. The lament of the Indian women’s choir retains some characteristics of the sung intonation, of the vibrato, of its timbres, in order to express the universal lament of mothers powerless in the face of injustice. The bourgeois women’s choir of Act II stands out for its drama and lyricism. This leads to a complex writing that associates spaces, energies, shapes and harmonic colors. In the final monologue, two internal and contradictory voices that are in us intertwine: that of power ready to crush and that of the lightness of spiritual being.