Composer and PhD researcher at the FCSH/ Kunstuniversität Graz/ Fondazionne Archivio Luigi Nono and member of the Concrète [Lab] Ensemble, João Quinteiro is In Focus on MIC.PT in March.
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This piece is one of a set of solo pieces, each of which takes as its point of departure some particular characteristic of the instrument/voice being used; there is no intention of exploring all possibilities, nor of writing in a virtuoso way, although this sometimes happens as a result.
In the case of the voice Essay, the main starting point was the voice's ability to transpose without any need for new fingerings and consequent renotation. An aleatoric web was created whereby a number of short fragments can be strung together in various possible orders in such a way that the first note of each new fragment is the same as the last of the previous fragment, producing a variety of possible transpositions.
Another natural characteristic of the singing voice is a text. In the past, the meaning of a text has always been paramount, the phonetic aspect being used when possible and suitable but in a rather haphazard and ornamental way. The idea was to make the phonetic aspect structural. Consequently, there is no meaning to the text: the sounds play as important a part in the musical structure as the pitches and rhythms, etc.
Christopher Bochmann