Output details

Cycle: 'A PINT OF PLAIN' and 'Privacy of Mind'

A PINT OF PLAIN (2012) was written for Curious Chamber Players and premièred at Kunstuniversität Graz during the Impuls Festival 2013. The production was part of a Ulysses Network project, supported by the EU Culture Program. The piece was later performed by Cikada Ensemble in Oslo.

Privacy of Mind (2013) was commissioned by the Norwegian Arts Council. It was premièred by The Roentgen Connection in Oslo and recorded for broadcast by NOTAM (Norwegian Centre for Music Technology). A second performance, in Krakow, is scheduled for 2014.

The pieces form a two-part cycle that combines French Baroque material with contemporary sounds, seeking to explore new points of textural interaction.

Initially, Egan recorded comprehensive timbral catalogues of each instrument, using musique concrète instrumentale as a starting point. Areas with overlapping sonorous qualities were identified with the help of FFT spectrographs. In order to find further points of interaction a number of new techniques and preparations were devised and similarly analysed. These were discovered through hands-on experimentation and in collaboration with the musicians; this process was informed by 21st century techniques of instrumental deconstruction (Billone, Steen-Andersen etc.). Examples of original inventions include keyboard preparations, the musical hourglass, and a series of percussion techniques.

The form for each piece was conceived graphically, employing timbral character as the key structural paradigm; the areas of textural interaction function as structural pivots. These act as skeletal hinges for textures that are diametrically opposed in terms of musical style, their physical action of sound production, and spectral representations.

Using well established systems for extended and decoupled notation as a starting point, the composer devised a two-staff model that combines pitch notation with graphical representations. This facilitates the notation of different types of physical movement in a standardised format that is faster to read than many other such models.