“El Viejo Errante” for amplified contrabass (2006)
Quadraphonic System and amplified contrabass
December 11th Stephan Raidl / Dar Kuzegari Concert at Theaterzaal / Amsterdam, NL.
June 3rd World premiere by Juan Pablo Trad / IGNM Strommusik / Vienna, AT.
The main idea of the work is to use only the acoustic resources of the contrabass to create a sensation that the instrument is being processed by electronics. When experiencing the music the audience feels that the contrabass has some sort of flanger of phaser. But, is the treatment of the circular bowing in the open strings of the amplified instrument. The piece should be performed with a quadraphonic system, one subwoofer and one bass amp for monitoring.
For this piece I found an excellent opportunity to relate more closely texts and music. With rhythmic codifications of the Key Morse, I was able to transform the verses below into a structural map and a literally reading of the letters into rhythm cells. The Errant Old Man is a character of Michael Ende’s book The Never Ending Story; and he is the memory of Fantastica. Everything that happens is written at the same time by him in “The Never Ending Story”, so it´s all a reflection of a reflection.
This paradigm is represented in a sentence of the book:
“I write down everything that happens, everything that I write down happens.”
I did a metaphor of this paradigm. At the end of the piece, the contrabass has to play the rhythm of the next sentence:
“I write down everything that sounds, everything that I write down sounds.”
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