Organization/Event GMCL — Música para a Modernidade
Venue Auditório da Universidade do Minho
Town Brafa
Country Portugal
Program Notes
The word resonance is familiar from acoustics, the discipline dedicated to the study of sound and its physical properties. Harmut Rosa, a German author and sociologist, uses this word to explain his theory of social sciences in his book of the same name, published in 2019. According to Harmut Rosa, "resonance" differs from classical sociology in that it focuses on people's way of life, on how they reconcile all aspects of everyday life, whether it's their profession, their family, their hobbies or everything else that surrounds their lives; in essence, the focus of resonance is on the harmony between all these aspects of life.
In Resonance for clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, cello and electronics, the two aspects of the word go hand in hand, the acoustics of the instruments themselves and the way in which, together, they form a whole. The percussion, with its wooden board built for this piece, is at the same time the instrument that controls all the electronics. The electronics have the function of balancing the need to send back excess sound and the amplification of the instruments' acoustic characteristics. As for the instruments, they are played silently in ppp almost in the limbo of perception, artificially provoking the moment when the sound overcomes the natural resistance of the instrument before resonating.
