Output details

Resonant Shoreline

Date January 2011

Medium Piano and Live Electronics

Duration 40 minutes

Funded/Supported by: Scottish Arts Council (UK); Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff Canada)

In collaboration with: Brazilian/Canadian pianist Luciane Cardassi (http://www.lucianecardassi.com/home.html )

All of Davismoon’s recent work uses algorithmic Markovian processes to manipulate musical gestures in real time, and create an evolving musical; form from disparate styles and elements. The work is a substantial (in length and scope) contribution to the piano and electronics repertoire, and re-contextualises these using algorithmic transformations many gestural archetypes appropriate to the site of the ringing stone: sacred bells, chant, majestic ritual, and evocations of water.

The piece’s point of departure from analyses of many contemporary works for piano including pieces by: Simon Emmerson, Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Messiaen, Sciarrino, Xenakis and Takemitsu; these are combined with intervallic/harmonic content a Gloria from the Liber Usualis. The use of Markovian chains arranged in a hierarchical manner extends work by Eduardo Miranda (University of Plymouth) to the choice of material referred to and its transformation within a traditional instrumental context.

Methodology/Outcome

With the use of the ‘OpenMusic’ algorithmic composition software, a network of ‘patches’ were contructed that, in a hierarchic Markovian sense, assisted in the modelling of the work on the micro and macro levels.

The work’s live-electronics (delays, filtering, spatialisation, reverberation and granularisation) was realised within the Ableton-Live/Max/MSP framework. The filtering and delays works in accordance with the registral and rhythmic character of the live piano part; the reveberation and granularisation gradually envelopes the sound of the live pianist.