Final work of the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges (2003), France.
Instrumentation
Musical Category Electroacoustic Music ("tape music")
Instrumentation (general) Electroacoustics
Premiere
Date 2003/Jun/11
Organization/Event Festival Synthèse
Town Bourges
Country France
Program Notes
Gist (2002) is the last of three pieces of mine that I consider somewhat connected to Baroque architecture. Although the metaphor of music as sound architecture dates from the 19th century, space metaphors are very much used when one describes musical form - a limit from our verbal and writing discourse about music. In the case of this composition, the multitude of sound objects and their virtual movement in space is related, in my own memory, to the multitude of escape points that one experiences upon entering in Baroque buildings, specially the churches that exist in Southern Europe and in some Latin America countries. Looking around, everything seems to move, suspending the past-present-future flow and somehow putting us in the "now" moment.
Our memory of these "presents", however, contains less and less actual detail as it recedes further into the past. And as I was progressing in the composition, the metaphor became less connected to architecture and more akin to chemistry (or alchemy to be less precise...). Gist is the remain of all these experiences.
Hopefully, the architectural metaphor will go beyond the mere intellectual organization of sounds and into a poetic listening state. This state emerges from the presence of pitched masses, disembodied human sounds and fleeting movements of micro sounds.
Gist was made in the author's studio during the fall of 2002. It uses several commercial and non-commercial software implemented on a Mac computer. Gist was premiered in the Bourges Synthese Festival in 11th of June 2003 and was pre-selected in the 2003 Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition.
António Ferreira
Circulation
Work
Type
Date
Organization/Event
Venue
Town
Country
Performers
Notes
Inv Row
Gist
Performance
2003/Sep/13
Música Viva Festival 2003
Transports Museum
Coimbra
Portugal
Notes
Gist
Performance
2003/Jan/01
SICMF 2003 - Seoul Electroacoustic Festival
South Korea
Notes
Gist
Performance
2003/Sep/01
International Computer Music Conference 2003
Singapore
Singapore
Notes
Gist
Performance
2003/Nov/01
Cycles de Musique Par Ordinateur
Paris VIII University
Paris
France
Notes
Mario Mary (organisation)
Mario Mary (organisation)
Gist
Performance
2003/Jan/01
SAE 03 - Electroacoustic Festival
Scarbourough
United Kingdom
Notes
Gist
Premiere
2003/Jun/11
Festival Synthèse
Bourges
France
Notes
Gist
Performance
2004/Jul/10
Festival Elektrophonie Nuit Bleue
Besançon
France
Notes
Gist
Performance
2007/Apr/03
Electroaoustic Music Days
Arts House
Seia
Portugal
Notes
Gist
Performance
2010/Sep/09
III FIMC - Contemporary Music International Festival