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Intermedio III

Concert work for bass clarinet and live electronics

This work addresses the formation of an integrated musical language based on the properties of bass clarinet multiphonics, as revealed by spectral analysis and transformation. Several circumstances converged to form the research context for this piece: a new “map” of the bass clarinet (Sparnaay, 2011, ‘The Bass Clarinet’. Berlin: Pereferia); the demand for solo works with live electronics that do not require a technician; and recent improvements in real-time spectral transformation. The piece was developed in consultation with bass clarinettists Marij van Gorkom and Harry Sparnaay. The work employs multiphonics created especially for this piece and exploits the ability of the instrument to hold one pitch steady against an inflected melodic line.

The aesthetic principle of the work is based on the use of multiphonics not as “effects” but as the basis of a language in which their specific pitch content governs the music’s harmonic and melodic material. The already inharmonic sound of multiphonics on the instrument is enriched and made more inharmonic by different degrees of spectral “warping”, relocating the partials according to a non-linear mapping, using the composer’s own additions to processes outlined by Sethares (Sethares, W., et al., 2009, ‘Spectral tools for Dynamic Tonality and audio morphing’, ‘Computer Music Journal’, 33(2), pp. 71–84). This forms the core of a live electronics patch that also performs other transformations of the live sound, such as sustaining certain pitch components to clarify the evolving harmonic structure. The various treatments are mapped back to the envelope of the clarinet in an “exponential” fashion, so that quite sudden surges of enriched sound can emerge from an otherwise delicate musical fabric, while the thresholds that give rise to these surges can be learned by the player and used expressively, in accordance with the principle of maximal continuity between live and transformed sound.