Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Astray"

22'47
ASTRAY
FUR
6 SAXOPHONE
(SOPRANINO
SOPRAN
ALTO
TENOR
BARITON
BASS)
DANIEL KIENTZY
UND
SOUND ICON
HORATIU RADULESCU

ASTRAY op. 50 (1983) for Double Duo was composed for the Roma Villa Medici Musica Festival where it premiered in 1984. The score consists of 81 paintings using symbols from ancient languages. These 81 micro-music entities were photographed and projected as slides during the performance. In addition to its ancient alphabet symbol, each image contains precise indications for the two players: the saxophone player performs on six saxophones (bass, barytone, tenor, alto, soprano, sopranino) which hang from a frame, the other player performs on a Sound Icon.

This duo plays simultaneously with another identical duo. Both duos perform the same score, but at different speeds. The first duo performs the score twice: slowly at first, faster the succeeding time the second duo performs the score once during the same time span very slowly.

It should be noted that each (4 of the 81 micro-music entities (the chain of those three aspects of the same score: (A', A", A"') appears at three different moments of the macro-music and develops its own "inner life" within three different times. The "golden number" (0.618034 /1.00) - sectio aurea - determines all of these time proportions.

This macro-formal process affects our subconscious, often creating a sensation of remembrance or premonition merging into a magic trance. The ancient symbols are mnemotechnical indications for the specific performance technique required for each micro-music. Their colors indicate the six registers (from low to high: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet). These special techniques of sound production reinforce the spectral energy (variable distribution) of each event or chain of events (spectral pulse). Four simultaneous levels of perceptual speed occur; MMT - macro-macro time of the 22'45"macro-form tension; mMT - micromacro time as pulse of the 3 x 81 micromusic entities, each of which lasting between 5" and 34"; MmT - macro-micro time of the rhythm produced by the actual onsets, and mmT - micro-micro time, intrinsic rhythm of the sound material up to 333 timbral transformations per second. contributing to the spectral enhancement of each event. All sounds notated in the score are performed live and are not electronically modulated. The cause (sound source) and the effect (sound parameters) are rendered unrecognizable by the special techniques of sound production.

In this particular studio recording, the two duos were recorded in playback with Daniel Kientzy and the composer. For a concert performance, 4 to 7 players are required (The Sound lcons (3 & 2) require 5 players); the two duos are disposed around the audience. The score, projected from slides, contributes to the visual "environrnent". Horatiu Radulescu

THE SOUND ICON: a grand piano laying vertically on its side, with the strings played by bowing. The instrument is presented in a new light; it now resembles a religious object-Byzantine icon. At a time, when religion was only possible in Romania through music, I called this instrument "Sound Icon". Because I played violin myself, I was obsessed with the idea of reversing the proportion of the roles between bows and strings. The problem was solved by reducing the bow to a single hair - in most instances, a very fine thread (diameter 1/10 mm). By describing a sVe around the piano string, this rosined thread brings the string into vibration and causes all other open strings of the piano to resonate in sympathetic vibration resulting in a fabulous resonance; rhythm is transformed into timbre, etc..

The first public performance with Sound lcons took place in 1974 at the Festival de Provence in France, where 17 players premiered A DOINI op. 24. In A DOINI, CLEPSYDRA and ASTRAY as well as in other works, the bowing technique used on the Sound lcons takes many variable parameters into account: speed, angle, diameter, pressure point along the string (a minimum of six: sul ponte, verso il ponte, normal, un poco sul tasto, molto sul tasto, moltissimo sul tasto), double and triple ponticello, multiphonics on a single string, etc.. The tuning of the strings (scordatura) of the Sound Icon is specific to each score and strictly corresponds to the intervals determined by the spectral components (i.e. harmonic scales of logarithmic and thus unequal intervals). -- Horatiu Radulescu

DANIEL KIENTZY was born on June 13, 1951 in Pbrigueux. France. From 1966-72, he played in various jazz and rock groups. He studied double bass at the Versailles Conservatory and played in the orchestra of the Grand The8tre, Limoges, from 1972-74. Kientzy went on to study saxophone at the Conservatoire National, Limoges and at the Conservatoire National Superieur, Paris, where he was awarded first prizes for saxophone and chamber music. Interested in early music, he founded the Musica Ficta group, in which he played viola da gamba, recorders, crum horn and bagpipe from 1974-78. Since the late 1970's. Kientzy has devoted himself entirely to the saxophone. Not content with stereotyped playing techniques, he undertook a comprehensive research program, first in a private studio and then at IRCAM, and has succeeded in making the saxophone a major solo instrument for contemporary music. He has become internationally well known through his inventions and extensions of new playing techniques of the saxophone, including the introduction of electronics into the instrument's range. His treatise Les Sons Multiples aux Saxophoneswas published with Editions Salabert, Paris in 1982.