Saxophones and electronics
The works on this CD were
composed for Meta Duo, and the earliest of them is written by Ivar Frounberg.
Because of the similarity between the name Saxo and the word saxophone, and
because of Ivar Frounberg's fascination with Saxo's writings, the title Saxo suggested itself. However, the
music has no direct references to stories in the work of the Danish chronicler
Saxo, who in the years about 1200 wrote an early Danish history in Latin. The
work does however itself involve a number of stories which come to expression
through harmonic structures, tempo relations and melodic lines. The piece is
divided into five sections, each of which introduces a new saxophone
instrument: first the sopranino, then the baritone and the baritone again, then
the alto and finally a duo for alto and contrabass saxophone. There are two
slow movements between more active movements, but the tempo changes between the
movements do not follow the changes between saxophones and harmonies and
therefore contribute to a certain ambivalence in the experience of the form.
The electro-acoustic elements add further dimensions and layers.
Jens Hørsving's music is in the
borderland between the classical and the popular-rhythmic tradition. The classical
structures, methods and techniques encounter the amplified, energetic universe
of ‘rhythmic' music, whose direct musical nerve is preserved without sidelining
classical music's attention to detail. In Corrosions for soprano sax and electronics
the instrumental lines and electronic soundscapes are subjected to various
attacks of musical corrosion. The attacks range from light assaults that only
make scratches on the surface to severe corrosion where the whole construction
collapses.
Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg's Dif:rq! -
Paraphony for saxophones
and electronics takes its point of departure in the historical Greek -aulos, a double-reed twin-pipe wind
instrument that was very common in ancient Greece. The family relationship of
the saxophone with this historic shawm prompted Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg to
set out to rediscover what one could call the lost polyphony of the wind
instruments. The cryptic title Dif:rq! can be read as an abbreviated form of di-frequency,
that is two pitches, or of differential frequency, which is the difference
between two pitches. Both meanings and their nuances are involved in the use of
diphony in the piece. There is a further duality in the Greek-derived word
‘para-phony', which can be translated as co-sounding, that is a sound or note
that sounds together with another.
In Morten Olsen's Irazz the listener is not only invited
down into the depths, to the sounds that the composer knows so well from his
place behind his double bass; but also down into the dark interior of the Costa
Rican volcano Irazz, where daylight never penetrates. Although eruptions of the
volcano are few and far between, the volcano is in constant activity. Inside it
thick-flowing melted stone, gases and masses of energy must wait for centuries
for a releasing eruption. In Irazz there is no real eruption, but despite inactive
periods one constantly senses the energy that could lead to an explosive
eruption. These deep, disturbing sounds are played on a bass saxophone assisted
by the electronic elements, where recordings of low saxophones and double
basses are treated and distorted, often beyond recognition.
With the aid of principles from
‘spectral music' the Faroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen carries on the musical
tradition of the Faroe Islands in his works. In the finished work, though, one
rarely hears direct quotations from folk music. Instead Sunleif Rasmussen uses
the traditional Faroese melodies structurally, among other ways by determining
time values on the basis of the intervallic proportions of the melody, and from
the individual notes of the melody he generates sound via the harmonic
spectrum. This is also true of the work Le psaume salé (The Salty Hymn). The musical
material is a reworking of Thomas Kingo's hymn Lov og tak og evig ære (Praise and thanks, eternal
glory) as well as two Faroese variants of the same hymn tune. Towards the end
one can hear, in an electronic reworking, the melodic variant from the Faroese
district Tjørnuvik as sung by two elderly men.
Frode Andersen, 2004