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THE LAST DAYS OF REALITY / 2011 - 2018 ~ compositions instrumentales pour DECIBEL new music ensemble et électronique…

by Lionel Marchetti & Cat Hope & DECIBEL

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---- 2011 / 2018 ---


THE LAST DAYS OF REALITY


« De ce peu de choses, juxtaposées
naît une force d'évidence
difficile à nommer
réunissant à elle seule le sensible d'une oreille incendiaire »
L.M.

-

Composed by Lionel Marchetti
and
Cat Hope

Performed by Decibel new music ensemble

Cat Hope : artistic director, flutes, voice, ocarina, harmonica
Lindsay Vickery : clarinets, ocarina, harmonica
Aaron Wyatt : viola, ocarina, harmonica
Tristen Parr : cello, ocarina, harmonica
Stuart James : piano, electronics, sound design
Louise Devenish : percussions

All partition concrète and electronic parts composed by Lionel Marchetti — electronic parts (synthesisers, tape recorder manipulation and electronic manipulation) are composed & played at Marchetti’s personal studio, and Première étude (les ombre) at CFMI de Lyon, France

All acoustic parts recorded by Stuart James at Soundfield Studios and the Music Auditorium at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Western Australia

Mixed by Lionel Marchetti

Mastered by Lawrence English

CD available here : room40.org

Photographie : BRUNO ROCHE (2018)

Copyright / SACEM / Lionel Marchetti

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1 - Une série de reflets (2012)

For flute, clarinet, piano, cello, viola, percussion and partition concrète

« De ce peu de choses, juxtaposées
naît une force d'évidence
difficile à nommer
réunissant à elle seule le sensible d'une oreille incendiaire

De rien, de ce peu de choses récoltées 
(un animal à la recherche de graines pour se nourrir.) »
L.M.


« Out of these very few things, juxtaposed
A self-evident strength arises
Hard to identify
Uniting on its own the sensitivity of a subversive ear.

Out of nothing, out of these very few harvested things
(an animal looking for scraps to feed itself.) »



2 - Pour un enfant qui dort (2013)

For flute, bass flute and partition concrète

Voices : Cat Hope, Adèle Marchetti, Kyô Marchetti Higashi

« J'emporte, serrées contre mon torse, quelques branches prises à la forêt gelée

Mon enfance, abreuvée d'or froid et de lumière
se déploie en autant d'aiguilles odorantes

J'aime la neige, j'aime le froid, j'aime le monde et ses clartés

Mon unique désir ? Vous emporter dans la demeure de la petite fille des neiges. »
L.M.


« Nestled against my chest, I carry a handful of branches
Borrowed from the frozen woodland

My childhood, showered with cool gold and light
unfolds in fragrant needles

I love the snow, I love the cold, I love the world and its brightness

My only desire? To take you there, to the home of the little snow maiden. »
L.M.



3 - The last days of reality (2018)

For Tam tam, Bass Flute and partition concrète.
Tam tam on partition concrete by Louise Devenish and Vanessa Tomlinson

‘The Last Days of Reality’ is the title of an article by futurist Mark Pesce in the magazine Meanjin Quarterly, published in the Australian summer of 2017. In it, he notes that “it’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine what in our interactions is simply human and what is machine-generated. It is becoming difficult to know what is real.” The sound of the tam tam and bass flute interweave with Marchetti’s partition concrete, where it is no longer clear what is the instrument and what is the ‘pre-record’, what is the real, whole instrument, and what is the tampered or mirrored version of it.



4 - Le cerveau (2018) 

For flute, clarinet, piano & prepared piano, cello, viola, percussion and partition concrète

Recorded prepared piano : Lionel Marchetti


« La lumière se déverse depuis les anfractuosités d'une roche

De ce flux, ce reflux
comme si l'océan, en un point
absorbait tout l'espace
le rêve apparaît et se partage en un millier de structures chantantes. »
L.M. 


« Light spills out of the rocky cracks and crevices

From this ebb, from this flow,
as if the ocean in one given point
absorbed all the space,
the dream appears and splits in a thousand singing
shapes. »
L.M.



5 - The Earth defeats me (2014)

For bass flute, bass clarinet and partition concrète

This work, and its companion piece 'The Last Days Of Reality’ are notated using animated graphic notation. The title, The Earth Defeats Me, frames the long durations that feature in this piece. The sheer size of the world, and the large scale and slow evolution of the passing of time create a challenge for humankind, who often struggle to perceive experience beyond their own life span. The long durations in the score, which sometimes appear static as the animated notation moves so slowly, become difficult to read and play, despite their simplicity.



6 - Première étude (les ombres) (2011)

For ocarinas, clarinet, piano & prepared piano, cello, viola, percussion and partition concrète

« Je me doutais que le piège était un piège

J'ai été pris et je le serai encore

Quel est cet homme en moi, pas encore né ?

Je sais, désormais, que l'eau noire est l'espace qu'il me faut pour m'unir à la substance
— l'eau noire ou la substance ? »
L.M.


« I suspected that the trap was a trap

I was caught and I will be again

Who is this man inside me, not yet born?

I know now that black water is the space I need
to unite with matter
- black water or matter? »
L.M.


English Translations by Estelle Hoen.

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DECIBEL

Decibel are an Australian new music ensemble that focus on the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, the interpretation of graphic notations and pioneering digital score formats for composition and performance. Formed in 2009, the ensemble has commissioned over seventy new works, toured Japan and Europe, and released recordings on Pogus, Listen:Hear, Hat Hut, HellosQuared and Heartless Robot. They have worked with composers such as Eliane Radigue, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld and Werner Dafeldecker as well as Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Eric Griwsold, Warren Burt and others. They have presented Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Giacinto Scelsi,Roger Smalley amongst others.


Decibelnewmusic.com


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Partition Concrète :



« Une partition concrète est une composition écrite avec les sons eux-mêmes - à la manière d'une composition de musique concrète - mais ici (et contrairement à une musique concrète où tout est définitivement fixé par le compositeur puis spatialisé, en concert, sur acousmonium dans une esthétique que l'on pourrait qualifier de cinéma pour l'oreille) la partition concrète est à considérer comme un modèle à imiter - un guide - en entier ou en ses parties, par un ou plusieurs instrumentistes.

Une partition concrète est ainsi travaillée sans l'aide, tout d'abord, pour les interprètes, d'aucune notation autre que les sons enregistrés eux-mêmes : une partition auditive ; cependant, un échange avec le compositeur autour de la poétique envisagée est bien sûr nécessaire et il est possible d'élaborer, au cours du travail, une notation propre à chacun. 

Les partitions concrètes sont en version monophonique, stéréophonique ou multi-pistes selon l'exigence des compositions. 
Les partitions concrètes sont spatialisées en même temps que les parties instrumentales, sur un système haut-parlant qui est précisé dans son implantation et sa facture (en général des amplificateurs pour guitare basse, de préférence à lampe, disposés dans l'espace du concert, au plus proche des instrumentistes) et qui sont étalonnés, pour leurs volumes sonores, de manière à créer une illusion acoustique telle que l'on ne saura pas distinguer si le son est d'origine instrumentale ou haut-parlante. 

Une partition concrète est également à considérer, pour l'interprète, au-delà d'un unique modèle à imiter, comme un alter ego avec lequel intimement dialoguer - un appui ou encore un allié sur lequel il sera possible de s'insérer en s'accordant à la poétique envisagée… »



« A concrete score is a composition written using the sounds themselves – in the same fashion as a concrete music composition. But here, unlike in concrete music where everything is determined by the composer then spatialised for live performance at the Acousmonium (in what we could call a ‘cinema for the ear’ aesthetic), the concrete score must be regarded as an example – a guide – to be emulated, as a whole or in parts, by one or several players.

The performers, thus, start working on the score without any other notation than the recorded sounds themselves: an auditory score. A conversation with the composer around the intended poetic is, however, necessary, and it is possible to build individual notations throughout the working session.

The concrete scores appear in monophonic, stereophonic or multi-channel versions, depending on the requirements of the compositions. They are spatialised at the same time as the instrumental sections on a system of speakers organised in a specific set-up, usually consisting of tube bass amplifiers, placed in the concert space, as close as possible to the players. The volume and timbre of these are carefully adjusted in order to create a certain acoustic illusion which makes it impossible to distinguish if the sound originates from the instrument or from the speaker.

For the performers, a concrete score also needs to be considered beyond a model to be followed. Rather, it can be seen as a sort of alter ego with whom it is possible to engage in an intimate dialogue – a support or an ally onto which musicians can lean whilst fine-tuning with the intended poetic. »

---

Working with notation and the partition concrète
by Cat Hope, July 2018 :

The pieces ‘The Earth Defeats Me’ and ‘The Last Days of Reality’ differ from the other works on this recording, as they are scored in animated notation. They are created in four steps. Firstly, a score is created by Hope, which is then performed by the instruments for a recording. This recording is engaged by Marchetti as part of the source material for the creation of the concrète part, which is then embedded into the score file, played back in coordination with the score on a tablet computer. This creates the final, fixed score – a digital document of interlocked audio and image that unfolds in realtime, which is referred to in every performance. The four-step process occurs only the once, from hereon in, the piece is performed like any other for instruments and fixed media. The concrete part is also a stand-alone piece and can be presented alone.

The performers’ reading of the graphic notation in these two works is considerably influenced by the concrete part, just as the creation of the concrete part was itself informed by the instrumental sounds. Graphic notation has the capacity to provide and independent structure, dynamic and timbre from the concrete part, whilst still leaving space for the intuition and personal decisions of each performer. This method of working is enabled by placing scores in the Decibel ScorePlayer, a tablet application which enables coordinated reading of graphic notation, and enables audio to embedded into the score, facilitating highly coordinated performances of graphic notation that features a fixed media component.

www.decibelnewmusic.com/decibel-scoreplayer

---

Cat Hope is a composer, performer, songwriter, noise artist and researcher. She is a flautist and experimental bassist who plays as a soloist and as part of other groups. She has been a resident at the Peggy Glanville Hicks composers house, as well as a Civitella Ranieri, Visby International Centre for Composers and Churchill Fellow. Her work has been discussed in books such as Loading the Silence (Kouvaris, 2013), Women of Note (Appleby, 2012), Sounding Postmodernism (Bennett, 2011) as well as periodicals such as The Wire, Neu Zeitschrift Fur Musik Shaft and Gramophone Magazine, who called her "one of Australia’s most exciting and individual creative voices"(2017). Her works have been recorded for Australian, German and Austrian national radio, and her 2017 monograph CD on Swiss label Hat Hut, ‘Ephemeral Rivers’ won the German Record Critics prize that year.

----

From Cat Hope :

I first met Lionel Marchetti in Australia during the Liquid Architecture Festival in 2010. Decibel were touring our Alvin Lucier program, and Lionel was on the same bill performing a live performance set manipulating electro-acoustic materials with dancer Yoko Higashi. I was so taken with Lionel’s performances and the resulting music, that I asked him if he would write a piece for Decibel.

I didn’t realise that he hadn’t done something like this before. The first work was “Première étude (les ombres)”, communicated as a text score, and premiered in 2012. I was asked by Lionel to make some recordings of ocarinas, harmonicas, and folk instruments – and I sent these to him for the creation of a ‘partition concrète d'accompagnement’– a fixed media part that is featured in the live performance. For this piece, the part comes from speakers beside each performer, and a bass amplifier beneath the piano. Like his own performances I had seen the year before, the work was naturally performative – with unique speaker and performer configurations, interesting and odd additional instruments. It was such a rich work, a remarkable combination of electronic, spatial, acoustic and textural music. The performers use the partition concrete as a score.

I visited Lionel in Lyon, France in 2014, recording flute improvisations in his studio. He used these as a basis for “Une série de reflets”, again communicating via text instructions and each performer having their own dedicated speaker to interact with. “Pour un enfant qui dort”, which again requested flute sounds that were this time part of the live performance as well as the partition concrète, was also written around that time. The next work saw a more ‘compositional’ collaboration - “The Earth defeats me" began as a graphically scored work written by me and recorded by Decibel in the studio. That recording was used to make the partition concrète which is now an embedded as part of the animated score file, thanks to the software we had developed to do so.

These works exist as live performances, but also as singular concrète works, when heard without the instruments. Working with Lionel has been remarkable: he has a singular way of thinking about sound and its relationship to works and images. Music concrete is a lifestyle for him, it is a way of thinking, communicating and being. These pieces enable the acoustic instruments to be part of that – extending the ideas in the partition concrete, using them structurally and texturally, as well as being part of them.

When I first met Lionel, I didn’t realise he was in Australia because it was originally planned he would be travelling with French composer Éliane Radigue, performing some of her electroacoustic works, as her preferred diffuser. I would commission a work for Decibel from Élaine (“Occam Hexa II”) in 2014 and it was during that process I realised the link between them. Decibel performed Lionel and Eliane’s music together – it is music that concerns itself with the incredible power of sound, but from the most delicate and dream like perspective.

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PRESS

"This stunning collaboration between Australian composer and flutist Cat Hope and the French musique concrete practitioner Lionel Marchetti evolved slowly, following a festival in 2010 where they both performed. Hope didn’t realize that Marchetti hadn’t previously composed for a chamber ensemble before; their work together began with “Première Étude (Les Ombres)” which deployed a text score by Marchetti. He asked Hope to send him recordings of “ocarinas, harmonicas, and folk instruments,” which he transformed into a kind of readymade sound projection—which can stand on its own as individual pieces—as a backdrop for the performers on stage. The composed music flows around those manipulated recordings and other sounds created by Marchetti, its lovely abstraction blurring the lines between pre-recorded and live elements. “Pour Un Enfant Qui Dort” deploys flute recordings Hope made into a deliciously spacey multi-layered murk, regularly pierced by pinging electronic asteroids. The end result of all of these complicated processes provides some of the most gripping music I’ve heard in the last year."
Peter Margasak

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released November 23, 2018

Photographie : L.M. par BRUNO ROCHE (2018)

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Lionel Marchetti France

Lionel Marchetti (1967) : compositeur français de musique concrète, acousmatique & improvisateur avec instruments électroniques divers

...ses compositions musicales sont considérées comme
un véritable cinéma pour l'oreille…

"Concret ou abstrait ? J'aime l'abstrait où subsiste un souvenir de substance, le concret qui s'affine aux frontières du vide." (K.White)
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