The jet whistle horn pheasant fragments involve mixed ensembles of short and dry sounds, half instrument and half animal. Hybrid ensembles can formed, instruments coexist with animals or 'become animal'. If instrumental uses of sounds take them out of their recognizable habitats, a focus can be shifted to a process of 'becoming' something else. How will the isolated duck in a virtual room be different from an instrument?
"Becomings-animal are neither dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real. But which reality is at issue here? For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that the human being does not "really" become an animal any more than the animal "really" becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other than itself. (...) What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes."1
The materials are specific outbursts from 6 groups:
1: Microtonally descending phrases performed by jet whistles on flute and alto flute.
2: Occasional notes performed by a pheasant flapping its wings.
3: Rapid phrases of variable tessitura performed by secco sounds qualities on flutes:
Slaptongue on piccolo, flute and alto flute.
Lip pizzicato on flute and alto flute.
Tongue ram on flute.
Key clicks on alto flute.
4: Rapid phrases of variable tessitura performed by a mixed ensemble of instruments and animals, all samples of less than a second:
Short duck "bark".
Electric sound.
Flute tongue ram.
Woodpecker.
Short crisp sound found through processing of glass sounds.
Clacking glasses.
Nightingale "ratchet" sound.
Tuba slaptongue.
Violin short legno battutto.
Bush-cricket.
5: Outbursts of horn attacks, from hand stop to open. The hand movements create ascending glissandi on all notes.
6: Rapid phrases of variable tessitura are performed by staccato notes on piccolo, flute and alto flute.
All sounds
are transposed through melodic phrases, even though pitches of
woodpecker, glass sounds, and cricket are less perceptible.
Classification by pitch gets highly speculative. Subtle microtonal
tuning nuances are much less effective with noise sounds than with
centered pitch sounds. Still, general patterns between high and low
do make a difference. A miniature bush-cricket is a different animal
than a gigant bush-cricket.
In the
work Les Froissements d'Ailes de Gabriel , Brian Ferneyhough
associated the rustling of wings to Pauls Klee's Angelus Novus, by
Walter Benjamin interpreted as the 'Angel of history', and composed a
work with whirling instrumental figures.2
These installation fragments place concrete flapping of wings into
constantly varied virtual spaces. Different associations can arise
with a pheasant flapping it's wings in a tiny and resonant bathroom
or in a gigant cave. At certain points it could form a
'Klang-kadenz'3
for fragments of instruments and animals.
The
following scores are used to generate the fragments of short sounds,
while real perception of pitch strongly depend on the sounds
involved.
Example 15: Jet whistle pheasant 2.
Example 16: Jet whistle pheasant 8.
Example 17: Jet whistle pheasant 35.
Example 18: Jet whistle pheasant 43.
Example 19: Jet whistle pheasant 77.
Example 20: Jet whistle pheasant 94.
1 Deleuze, 1987, a thousand plateus, p. 238.
2 Toop, Concerto, que me veuz-tu? Booklet text for Les Froissements d'Ailes...,p. 13.
3 Lachenmann, 2004, Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, p. 3.