I found myself at the Pierre Boulez Saal once again, this time, to listen to something different. I went to see a recital of Ben Goldscheider and Philip Dawson, performing five pieces for horn and live electronics. I don't really know what live electronics means, so I wanted to find out by attending this concert. It turned out to be a very interesting experience.
Basically I learned that "live electronics" in contemporary classical music refers to the use of electronic devices to generate, process, or control sound in real-time during a live concert performance. It's a form of interactive music where the electronic element is not fixed or pre-recorded (like an audio tape or digital track) but is instead actively influenced by the performer(s) or the acoustic environment as the music unfolds. There is real-time processing, which is the core function. The sound produced by a performer (in this case, the horn) is immediately captured by microphones and sent to a computer or electronic hardware, where it is instantly manipulated using effects like reverb, delay, pitch-shifting, filtering, or granular synthesis. The processed sound is then fed back into the loudspeakers.
For this concert, they played five pieces: Zoë Martlew's Nibiru; Alex Groves' Single Form (Dawn); Thea Musgrave's The Golden Echo III; Hildegard Westerkamp's Fantasie for Horns II; and Mark Simpson's Darkness Moves II. I am not familiar with any of these works, let alone the composers. So I was curious. And it turned out to be a very enjoyable program.
Zoë Martlew's Nibiru is a highly programmatic work from 2018. I learned that the piece is inspired by the "Nibiru cataclysm," a supposed apocalyptic event. The music is intensely dramatic, opening with sounds of "nuclear armageddon" and featuring the solo horn as a "harbinger of apocalypse" pleading for humanity's salvation. The electronic part is a complex collage, including clips of prayers in multiple languages and the last known recording of an extinct Hawaiian bird.
I enjoyed in particular Alex Groves' Single Form (Dawn). It is a slow-motion, sonic sunrise of sorts. It is a minimalist, textural work that builds a dense soundworld from the horn's natural harmonic series. It starts in a dense and brooding low register and gradually unfurls into a wall of radiant light. I really liked how the live electronics captured the horn's segments and made echoes and reverberations of it.
I also liked the third and fourth pieces, but what struck me the most was the final piece, Mark Simpson's Darkness Moves II. It is an intense duet for the horn and electronics, which I learned was inspired by the poet Henri Michaux's experiments with mescaline. Simpson's goal was to create an "aural equivalent" of that experience: "a dark, frightening, ecstatic, earth-shattering dive into the unknown". The piece is highly virtuosic and full of "vivid, surreal musical gestures". I felt like I was drugged, of course, not with a substance, but with music.
Overall, this was a fantastic evening, and even though the program was relatively short, just clocking a little over an hour, it was nevertheless a fantastic and memorable experience.
