Reading Castañeda (1983-93), for flute, cello, string quartet, Metal-Sound-Objects and electronics
is a cycle of six pieces composed between 1983 and 1993. They all loosely relate to the books of Carlos Castañeda about the praxis of sourcery (‚brujería) among the yaqui indians in Mexico. The compositions are in no way musical settings of any particular text, they are somehow commentaries, music to be heard during the pauses between reading sessions. The pieces are the following, all include live-electronics:
–The Spirit-Catcher for Cello and electronics
–The Tonal for sound objects
-Sacateca´ Dance for flute and tape
–The Wings of Perception I for string quartett and tape
–The Wings of Perception II for 8 channel tape
–El Oro, for flute, cello and narrator
–The Nagual for sound objects and tape
Technically all of the pieces relate to metall sounds, amplified by contact-microphones, an instrument designed by Andrea Atlanti and myself around 1983. The analysis of these sounds led me to the design of a computer instrument which profits of that information, without in any way wanting to simulate the original sounds.
The computer instrument, baptized as SOUND-OBJECT GENERATOR, consists of 2 filter-banks of 32 (or 16) units each. The first bank filters white noise, creating thus a ’noisy spectrum‘, with frequencies that can be given at the input as a list . This ’noisy-spectrum‘ is refilterd by the second bank, where each of the filters has dynamic control of the central frequencies, of the q-factor and of the amplitude of the output. The SOUND-OBJECT GENERATOR has been implemented in many environments. The first version was written on the CHANT-Synthesizer, thereafter in CMusic, Common Lisp Music and in the ISPW Ircam-Synthesizer.
Uraufführung: ZKM, Karlsruhe, 1993
Tonträger: Wergo 2053-2
Tre Media/Ricordi