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.

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Clepsydra"

-- Liner Notes --

24'22
CLEPSYDRA
FUR
16 SOUND ICONS
EUROPEAN
LUCERO ENSEMBLE
LEITUNG
HORATIU RADULESCU

CLEPSYDRA op. 47 (1982) for 16 Sound Icons. (clepsydra: intermittent fountain or ebbing wells; a contrivance used in ancient times for measuring time by the flow of water; a water-clock - in contrast to clepsammia, whereby time is measured by the flow of sand in a glass).

This composition describes the macroshape of a horizontal clepsydra which gradually filters a single pitch from a rich sound spectrum. The music then "passes through" this pitch to develop into a new spectrum, becoming richer and more expansive.

In the 16-part score, the spectral components are activated as fundamentals with their own enhanced "spectral life" by different bowing techniques on the Sound Icons. These processes of dynamicltimbra1 evolution oscillate between heterogeneous and homogenous techniques of sound production - a kind of "spectral heterophony" of sound sources.

The dynamics of the 16 parts are differentiated, with a deep or faraway "ppp" occuring more or less simultaneously with a very near "fff". Since it is difficult to distinguish between the many layers of sound in a stereo recording, one should listen at a higher volume and concentrate on imagining the circle of 16 Sound lcons around oneself. The four historical musical paradigms. monody, polyphony, homophony, and heterophony, are actually quite impossible to distinguish from one another within this "sound plasma" - living sound that can only be comprehended from a global perspective, resembling the blue image of earth as viewed from outer space. -- Horatiu Radulescu

HORATIU RADULESCU was born on January 7, 1942 in Bucharest, Romania. He studied violin privately under Nina Alexandrescu, herself a disciple of George Enescu and Jacques Thibaud. In 1969 he was awarded the Master of Arts in Composition from the Bucharest Academy of Music, where he studied composition, orchestration, analysis, and formalized music under Tiberiu Olah, Stefan Niculescu and Aurel Strob. He has been living in Paris since 1969. From 1970-72 he attended courses for new music given by Mauricio Kagel and Luc Ferrari in Cologne, and John Cage, lannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt. He later worked with computer assisted composition and psycho-acoustics in Paris at IRCAM from 1979-81. In 1988 he was guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin. In 1989 and 1990 he was awarded the French Villa Medicis hors les Mursgrant for the USA and Italy. In 1969 he began to develop the spectral technique of composition: variable distribution of spectral energy "spectrum pulse", synthesis of global sound sources, processual micro-and macro-form, four simultaneous layers of perceptual speed, spectral scordatura (scales of unequal intervals corresponding to harmonic scales).

Publications describing his compositional theory include: Sound Plasma - Music of the Future Sign, Edition Modern, Munich 1973 and Musique des mes Univers, Revue Silences NQ 1, Editions de la Difference, Paris 1985.

His ceuvre includes over 70 pieces for solo instruments, voice, chamber ensemble, orchestra and tape which have been performed in Europe, North and South America. Israel, Japan and Australia.

This recording was made possible by the Artists-in-Berlin Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Noch Musik

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Iubiri"

-- Liner Notes --

PYTHAGORAS' DREAMINGS

Horatiu Radulescu, an unusual personage of today's music, resembles the leading figure Edgar Varese because of his sound innovations. Starting at the end of the 1960's with his composition Credo for nine cellos (1969), Radulescu developed an original sound world from his fundamental research concerning the sound spectrum. The work that followed, Flood for the Eternal's Origins for four soloists, groups or ensembles (Darmstadt, 1972) is the direct application of this experimentation and of his necessity "to enter" into the sound to rediscover the ocean of vibrations that Pythagoras scrutinized two thousand years ago, to "turn the beautiful and heavy page of history, learning about discrusive logic, imitating immediate reality by an exacerbated pantomime of sounds, towards the world of sound-phenomena which create themselves MUSIC, a world which became then imminent."

Born on 7 January 1942 in Bucharest, Radulescu studied the violin with Nina Alexandrescu, a disciple of Georges Enesco and Jacques Thibaud. At the National Conservatory of Bucharest, he obtained the master diploma in composition under Professors Tiberiu Olah (composition), Stefan Niculescu (analysis) and Aurel Stroe (orchestration and formalized music). Between 1970 and 1972, he participated in the "Courses for new music" at Cologne (with Mauricio Kagel and Luc Ferrari) and in the "Summer Courses" at Darmstadt" (with John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti). From 1979 to 1981, he participated in a course in Paris at the IRCAM (computer-assisted composition and psycho-acoustics). He moved to Versailles in 1969 and becae a French citizen in 1974. As a consecration of his intense artistic activity, he became a 'resident' at the DAAD in Berlin (1988-89). Then he won the prize 'Villa medicis hors les murs' in 1990/91 and a sabbatical year under a scholarship from the French government in 1992.

Fighting against what he calls a 'discontinuous and manufactured music' and the 'acrobatics of the postwar period and its post-serial waste products', the composer is 'partisan', on the contrary, to music based on 'energy operating within a sound that is as continuous as possible' - in the lineage of Giacinto Scelsi and Gyorgy Ligeti. Radulescu thus explains his own theory in a book entitled Sound plasma - music of the future sign. Exploring the infinite universe of the harmonic spectrum, the composer analyses all the parameters of sound - duration, ptich, timber and pulse. He speaks of the 'realization by synthesis of the global sources of sound, living sound plasmas wherein all the micro-parameters possess an infinite number of micro-rhythms'. If the duration of a work is hardly important for Horatiu Radulescu, the attention of the listener must be concentrated upon these sound micro-phenomena - in that philosophy, he is united with the Rumanian School and his teachers from Bucharest. Melodies, like rhythms, seem to dissolve into a state of being. Far from neglecting the contribution of the four great historical types of composition - monody, polyphony, homophony and heterophony-, the musician, while trying to realize a synthesis of these ideas, imagines a 'phenomenological language of sound plasma' that is not 'more reducible than any of these compositions, but remains as their consequence'.

In the graphic style of Earle Brown's or Christian Wolff's scores, Radulescu's - extremely beautiful - abandon the traditional lined paper and are presented as diagrams. The music is visualized using illuminated designs accompanied by short explanatory texts. Following the example of the musician Giacinto Scelsi - considered as "the direct father of abstractions' whos music he discovered in 1972 -, Radulescu uses the 'scordatura spectrale' notably in Thirteen dreams ago for 11 strings (1978). This is a technique allowing the modification of the habitual tuning of one or several strings of an instrument. One may thus enlarge the instrument's tessitura and vary its color. It is a procedure that appears for the first time in occidental string music in the sixteenth century, then again with Bach - in the Fifth Suite for solo cello- and closer to our time in the compositions of Scelsi-Quartets -, Gerard Grisey - Periodes - or with Richard Hoffmann, Salvatore Sciarrino and James Tenney.

Already considred to be an innovator, Radulescu is even more so because of an 'instrument' that he conceived in 196 and that he has since developed: the 'sound icon'. It is a piano positioned vertically like a harp - 'thus resembling a religious object, a Byzantine icon' - whose cover has been taken off to give access to the strings. By passing one or several nylon cords treated with rosin - like that used on a bow - behind teh piano strings, one obtains sounds of an infinite resonance that have no equivalent among other instruments.

Masked behind sometimes rowdy declarations and almost creating a new language by placing in the same melting pot English, German, Latin, Italian, French and Rumanian for the titles of his pieces, Radulescu converses in Time with Pythagoras - Pythagoras' dreamings (1972) - , Mircea Eliade - Taaroa (1968/69) - , Shakespeare - the quartet Infinite to Be Cannot Be Infinite/Infinite Anit-Be Could Be Infinite (1976/87) - and Lao Tzeu - the piano Sonatas No. 2 "Being and non-being create each other" (1990/91) and No. 4 "Like a well...Older than God (1993). A mystic? Radulescu is certainly, but it is a mysticism without concessions, molded from utopia and turned towards a poetic art that is expressed through an excess found in certain compositions. However one must not forget that his music is marked by a 'languishin' nostalgia, as defined by the text of his piece Doruind (for forty-eight voices, 1976) whose title is derived from Rumanian and means both 'desire' and 'nostalgia': the 'desire' is contained in 'pain'.

His recent compositions - since the 1980's - show an extreme refinement: he attempts less to provoke a sound continuity, than to assemble crystalline micro-melodies using multiple rhythms. In this new stage where the melodic aspect is more easily detected, the composer enrolls in a Neo-Byzantine liturgical tradition extending from 7th century Roman chant to certain scores of Szymanowski, Bartok, Enesco and Stravinsky. Thus the embryos of hymns - tropes, kondaks and canons - are found in the Byzantine Prayer for forty flutes (1987), in the vocal lines of Vetrata for twenty four vocalists and three sound icons (1991/92), in the viola duet Agnus Dei (1992), in "Cloches byzantines" (Byzantine Clocks) of the Sonate no. 2 for piano (1990/91), or still yet in the second movement 'le son scre' (the sacred sound) and third movement 'musique plus agee que la musique' (music older than music) -based on two Transylvanian Christmas carols - of the Sonata no. 4 for piano (1992/93).

Following Horatiu Radulescu's residence at Villeneuve d'Ascq (in the North Pas de Calais region of France) in march and April 1994 and at a festival - Polychromy 94 'Au-dela des limites...Espaces infinis' (Beyond the limits - Limitless Space) from April 11 to 15, where several major works of Radulescu were played -, this recording (the first!) of the Ensemble Polychromie directed by Nvart Andreassian leaves a concrete prolongation of the fruitful meeting of a composer with his interpreters.

Iubiri

for 16 instrumentalists (2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion and string quintet) and sound icon (1980-1981)
A commission of the French Ministry of Culture (1981)

Premiere: Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou (1981), Ensemble Itineraire conducted by Yves Prin. Other performances: the Rencontres Internationales of Darmstadt in 1984; Ars Musica, Brussels, 1993 and Lucero Festival, Paris 1993.

Dedication: "To my mother"

Iubiri is the Rumanian plural of "iubire" (love). The word "iubire" is a Latinization of the Russian word "lioubovi", just as the words "Liebe" or "love" are derived from Sanskrit. The work consists of 343 unique "iubiri" (loves), 343 unique "micro-music/orchestrations" that during forty-seven minutes integrate seven acoustical spectrums in the style of seven large historical tonal regions. "The fundamentals of these seven acoustical 'solar' systems, are themselves the seven first new harmonics of the initial C: C, G, E, B flat, D, F monesis, G triesis. This progressive macro-formal modulation gives a sentiment of continual ascension even if the global evolution of the registers is written in "sleeping hourglass" of seven octaves -, focal unison with "halo" -, and progressively reopens to seven octaves.

The 343 unique "micro-musics" (loves) arrive like explosions/implosions, "illuminations" issuing from a musical sphere", a sphere with equidistant meridians by which these 343 "musics" pulse with a "divinely diabolical" periodicity. The seven macro-speeds of this periodicity themselves describe an irregular curve: 6-5-4-2-7-1-3.

The pitches used by the musicians are spectral components with an intense "life-timber", spectrality of spectrum, "emanation of the emanation". The formants/chords (zero degree of this music) describe zones: explicit compact spectrums; inverted spectral regions - secondary functions, tertiary in low pitches, primary functions, auto-generating spectrums, p.E. "ring functions".

By very complex and often complimentary dynamic profiles, these spectral functions - "frequency plateaus" with intense life (timber, dynamics, micro-rhythms, etc.) - acquire the perceptive qualities of monody, polyphony or homophony that change at high speed." From this extremely detailed writing, a sonorous plasma arises, rich with various kinds of information. The listener can perceive melodies that are not played directly by the interpreters, but whose origin is found in the harmonics. -- Franck Mallet, July 1994, Translated by Mary Dibbern

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Sensual Sky"

Sensual Sky op. 62 (1985)
Ensemble Polychromie
Nvart Andreassian, conductor
Pierre-Yves Artaud, octobass flutes

-- Liner Notes --

Sensual Sky
version for 9 instrumentalists (alto flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, trombone, violin, viola, cello, string bass), sound icon and two octobass flutes pre-recorded by Pierre-Yves Artaud (1985)
Premiers: several versions (with different orchestrations): Turino, Festival Antidogma 1985 by the Ensemble Lucero under the direction of H.R.; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou (1988) by the Ensemble 2E2M under the direction of H.R.

Dedication: To Petra and Laura

The two flutes on pre-recorded tape sustain the instruments on the stage like a monochromatic landscape, while equally having the goal of "provoking turbulence in the readability of the score". The varied colors of Sensual Sky are obtained due to clusters of notes of each instrument "hung" on an undulating axis. It is a "virtual spectral scordatura"; that is, a micro-tonal change of the tuning of one (or several strings) of an instrument. Following the example of the musician Christian Wolff, the composer draws a parallel between the guiding idea of his piece and Calder's mobiles.

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Inner Time II"

-- Liner Notes --

Horatiu Radulescu
inner time II, op. 42
Homage to Calder
for 7 B Flat clarinets [1993]

armand angster clarinet systems
armand angster, jean-pierre peuvion, vincent jacquemin, laurent berthomier, jean-marc foltz, jean-louis bergerard, denis tempo

the inner life of sounds
by Richard Toop

Once described by Messiaen as "one of the most original young composers of our time", Horatiu Radulescu (b. 1942) remains one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic voices in new music. Born in Bucharest, he moved to Paris in 1969 and, partly inspired by Stockhausen's composition Stimmung, "concluded that it was necessary to 'enter into' the sound, to rediscover the ocean of vibrations that Pythagoras has scrutinised two thousand years ago". The result was the evolution of a technique of 'spectral composition', based on the idea of audibly projecting the activity and energy of the various partials (overtones) innate in a single instrumental pitch - an approach which became almost de rigueur for non-serialist Parisian composers in the seventies and eighties.

A sort of baroque extravagance presides over many aspects of Radulescu's music: it seems entirely appropriate that he has an address in Versailles. Titles both whimsical and apocalyptic - Flood for the Eternal's Origins, Incandescent Serene, A Cryptic Crystal Cuddles the Somnambulant Day - are matched by exotic instruments such as gold and silver cymbals, bowed monochords and sound icons, and lavish resources (e.g. Wild Incantesimo, with its nine orchestras, and a score consisting of 4400 slides projected on nineteen screens).

There are sound reasons for these large forces. The idea of spectral composition logically calls for large numbers of identical instruments or ensembles, like the thirty-four monochords in Do Emerge Ultimate Silence or the Byzantine Prayer, with its fourty flautists and seventy-two flutes. And as the latter title indicates, there is alos a pronounced religious, ritual dimension to Radulescu's music - "the music we are composing is, above all, the music of a special state of the soul, and not the music of action" - and much of the spectacle has its roots in an evocation of ancient Byzantine rites. Indeed, the sound icon - a grand piano laid on its side, the strings being bowed - intentionally presents the instrument "in a new light; it now resembles a religious object - a Byzantine icon. At a time when religion was only possible in Romania through music, I called this instrument a sound icon."

Outer Time and Inner Time, the two pieces which jointly comprise Radulescu's Op. 42, date back to the early eighties. The two works are inversely related: the composer refers to Outer time as a "mountain" (a huge registral sweep going from high to low), and Inner Time as a "valley" (high to low to hifh). For the composer, "the whole valley-like trajectory [built] according to Golden Section (sectio aurea) proportions, operates on our subconsciousness in the sense of a pure introspection of our selves' inner time, a kind of inner sight, of vécu intérieur (inner life)." Both pieces have undergone many transformations over the years. outer Time has appeared in versions for twenty-three flutes, for fourty-two Thai (or Java-nese) gongs, for two grand pianos (spectrally returned!), for trio (viola, cello, bass) and for brass ensemble. Inner Time first emerged in 1983 as a piece for solo clarinet, written for Roger Heaton, with an alternative version for seven wind trios (each comprising flute, oboe and clarinet). The next year it reappeared in Darmstadt as a piece for solo clarinet with four accompanying clarinets echoing orbits.

Inner Time II, Op. 42
Homage to Calder
for seven B flat clarinets [1993]

Inner Time II, the work heard on this recording, is a newly composed piece based on the same spectral scale material. It is for seven B flat clarinets, who in a live performance are placed in a large circle around the audience, and coordinated by a Light Quartz Timer (a kind of ultrastable, multicoloured visual click-track, invented by Radulescu some twenty years ago).

The pitch structure is based on a scale of 42 pitches (spectral scordatura) which are the partials 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and then every odd-numbered partial up to the 83rd of a low A; the emphasis on odd-number partials neatly matches the natural timbre of the clarinet, reinforcing as the composer puts it, "the sober and poetic unity of the score". The 6th partial is the bottom E on the clarinet; the 83rd lies just below the high D which marks the top of the conventional E flat clarinet range (though here, astonishingly, all the high partials are achieved on the normal B flat instrument!). Each clarinettist has a repertoire of just six steps of the scale (six frequency orbits), spread throughout the total range. However, since an enormous degree of accuracy of intonation is called for, especially in the highest register, where distinctions are notated to the nearest 64th of a tone, and then further inflected in cents (highly accurate tuning devices are used to find a basic fingering given for each note, and used again in rehearsal for verification), even the production of these six notes is a Herculean labour.

In both inner and outer forms, Radulescu's Op. 42 is a "Homage to [Alexander] Calder". The basic material is a single registral filter, a basic shape (mobile of distinctly Calder-like appearance laid over the spectral scordatura, which in its macro form provides the overall descent-ascent, and on a smaller scale furnishes 137 mobiles - derived from the basic one by the quasi-serial processes of inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion, as well as contraction and expansion in space (pitch) and time.

As indicated already, the principal formal tool at many levels is the Golden Section (sectio aurea - 1:0.618), and its rationalisation in the so-called Fibonacci Series (1 2 3 4 8 13 21 34 55 89 etc...). The basic filter is iteslf the product of four intersecting layers of Golden Section proportions. These proportions also determine the work's time structure at the upper two of the four distinct levels - "four layers of psych-acoustical Wahrnehmung [perception]" -, which the composer defines as Macro-Macro Time (MMT), micro-Macro Time (mMT), Macro-micro Time (MmT), and micro-micro Time (mmT). In the first instance (MMT), the Golden Section determines the relative lengths of the downstream (long) and the upstream (short); the turning point is a massively protracted (89 seconds) version of the basic shape which begins during the 34th minute, rising from the lowest spectral orbit. At the next level (mMT), the Fibonacci series (in effect, a 'pragmatic' expansion of Golden Section ratios) is used to regulate the lengths - in seconds - of each of the 137 mobiles (5 seconds, 8 seconds, 13 seconds, 21 seconds etc...). Within each mobile, the exact rhythm (MmT) is determined by 81 rhythmic models which regulate whether an instrument enters on, just before or just after the quaver pulse (an approach which Radulescu likens to the notes inegales of baroque performance practice). The final level (mmT) is that of the sound's inner life: "the fastest aural information - up to +/- 333 informations/changes per second in spectrum/timbre."

accroche note

is an ensemble of soloists which was formed in 1981 around Francoise Kubler and Armand Angster. The character of each programme determines the choice of musicians, according to their musical personality. In number, the group can vary from soloist through to chamber ensemble, and they take advantage of this flexibility to tackle a spectrum of repertoires ranging from vocal and instrumental music of yesterday and today [passing from the Vienna School to Kagel, by Stravinsky, Dallapicoola, Boulez and Berio] to jazz, improvised music and music-theatre. More and more, Accroche Note is attracting composers by the originality of its sound range. it has been actively engaged for several years in the commissioning of works, encouraging the creation of new scores, a new repertoire, always working closely with the composers. Among recent first performances figure notably music by Georges Aperghis, James Dillon, Pascal Dusapin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Philippe Manoury and Marc Monnet.

further reading...

Haratiu Radulescu: Sound plasma - music of the future sign
Modern Verlag, Munich, 1973

Horatiu Radulescu: Musiques de mes univers
Silences no. 1 - Editions de la Difference, Paris, 1985

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "CAPRICORN'S NOSTALGIC CRICKETS"

-- Liner Notes --

CAPRICORN'S NOSTALGIC CRICKETS II opus 16 no 2 (1980) (1. composed 1972 in Grasse/Les Lucioles, 11. composed in Versailles) I. Edition Modern Munich ; 11. Lucero Print

7 flutes move along a "square well" of 96 sounds - an "infinite melody", closed circle of "inharmonic" quarter-tones. Each of the 7 has a different start point: a canon which had already began since the sound-sources play continuously.

Each sound lasting ca 9 seconds (subjective time) is irregularly placed within a period of 11 second-long (objective time). Imagine a sphere with equidistant 96 meridians/feints through which irrupt 96 micro-music events. Due to their various consistency that implacable periodicity (the 11 second-pulse) will become imperceptible.

Four types of sound-production technique ("timbre-being") activate the micro-spectrality of each sound:

1. yellow tremolo ("morse" signals of different fingerings on a unique pitch)

2. stable multiphonics

3. unstable multiphonics, "overblowing producing "spectral thermometers", multiphonics variably explicitated

4. simultaneously singing and instrumental sound with flattertongue

The statistical reading of these 4 types of "timbre-being'' creates a "directional random" evolving toward several "accidents of purity" (the 20th eruption : 6 yellow tremoli and l overblowing the 43rd eruption : no multiphonic (unique case) the 87th eruption : 6 sung flattertonguings and 1 yellow tremolo) and inscribing itself into a fusiformali macro-register trajectory. This resembles a natural phenomenon where the cause (sound - sources) and the effect (sound parameters) become very often undetectable, a "drunk organ" simulated by the seven flutes.

The 7 soloists are conducted by the composer.

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "FRENETIC0 IL LONGING DI AMARE"

-- Liner Notes --

FRENETIC0 IL LONGING DI AMARE opus 56 (1984 ... 1.87) for bass voice, octobass or double-bass flute and sound icon has been premiered in Cologne 1987 at the ISCM World Music Days by the soloists of the European Lucero Ensemble : the composer (bass voice), Beata Gabriela Schmidt (doublebass flute), Petra Junkcn and Eric Tanguy (sound icon).

The score describes a figurated choral based on the theorical components of an E-spectrum, inbetween the 6th and the 53rd harmonic.

The sound icon, a concert grand piano vertically placed and played with bows, is offering and sustaining - as to its spectral scordatura - the strict pitches of nonequal intervals on which the voice and the flute are meeting themselves. The sound icon remembers the role of a tampura in the indian rags.

The flute and the voice are coloring these pitches by means of special sound production techniques. Thus on the spectral components which became now fundamental pitches these techniques are producing an enriched and unstable "micro-spectrality" - "Cmanation de I'Cmanation" : micro-rhythm and phase-shifting, and other aural informations capable of captivating other perception with that intrinsic life of the sound-matter.

The "frenetic longing to love" is an intimate ritual, sobre but incandescent. The performers are now the same as for the world premiere, except for the flute which is played by Pierre-Yves Artaud.

N.B. : The sound icon has been rigourously developped by the composer since 1968169 and for the first time publically played in Darmstadt 1972 (opus I I). I Royan 1973 (opus 16) and Sanary festival de Provence 1974 for the world premiere of A DOINI opus 24 for 17 musicians with sound icons.

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Byzantine Prayer"

-- Liner Notes Continued --

BYZANTINE PRAYER Opus 74 (1988) for Giacinto for 40 flutists with 72 flutes

This music was composed in Versailles shortly after the death of our friend, the composer and poet Scelsi, and should be listened to as a REQUIEM. The RITORNELLO LITANICO is alternating with three INTERMUNDI (alpha, beta, gamma).

The 40 flutists are distributed in 8 concentric groups, each of I, 2,3,5,X, 13,5,3 respectively : 1 octobass flute, 1 double bass flute and 1 bass, 3 alto flutes, 5 bass.

8.13 and 5 grand, 3 other alto flutes.

The circular sound movements and the chord eruptions entirely use the spatialisation of the 40 sources disseminated into audience. The ritornello pitches belong to a theorical A-spectrum. Compact spectral zones or ring-modulated spectrum components are explicitated by the 8 flute groups or by the whole mass of 40 flutists, fact that has obliged us to use a notation on two parallel pages which are complimentary and should be read simultaneously. The intermundi evolve within other 6 spectra, and use besides the 8 flutes'groups the dialogues (cori spezzati) of the flute's" outer star", "inner star" and flutes'tutti.

The opus 74 was commissionned 1988 by the Metz Festival where it was premiered by the Orchestre Franqais de FIGtes conducted, as here, by the composer.

Horaţiu Rădulescu, "Dizzy Divinity I"

-- Liner Notes --

Horatiu RADULESCU was born on January 7,1942 in Bucharest, Romania.

He studied violin privately with Nina Alexandrescu, herself a disciple of George Enescu and Jacques Thibaud.

In 1969 he was awarded the Master of Arts in Composition from the Bucharest Academy of Music, where he studied composition, analysis, orchestration, formalized music with Tiberiu Olah, Stefan Niculescu and Aurel Stroe.

1970 - 72 he attended the Cologne Courses for New Music (Mauricio Kagel, Luc Ferrari) and the Darmstadt Summer Courses (John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgy Ligeti) and 1979 - 81 the Paris IRCAM Courses for computer-assisted composition and psycho-acoustics.

He has been living in Paris since 1969 and became a French citizen in 1974. In 1988 he was guest of the DAAD in Berlin, and 1989 & 90 he was granted the French Prize "Villa Medicis hors les murs" for the USA (San Francisco) & Italy (Venice, Rome). 1992 "AnnCe sabbatique" grant of the French government. 1969 he lays the base of the spectral technique of composition : variable distribution of the spectral energy - "spectrum pulse", synthesis of global sound sources, processual micro- & macro-form four simultaneous layers of perceptual speed, spectral scordatura - scales of unequal intervals corresponding to Fourier's harmonics, e.g. : opus 10 CREDO (1969) for nine violoncelli (55') where over 4000 spectral processes integrate the first 45 components of a unique spectrum - "Cmanation de I'Cmanation" or opus 33 "INFINITE TO BE CANNOT BE INFINITE INFINITE ANTI-BE COULD BE INFINITE" (1976-87) for nine string quartets (49') where 128 different spectral components - inbetween the 36th and the 641st harmonic - are building up the scordatura of an imaginary "viola da gamba" (the 128 strings of the 8 string quartets around the audience) while the 9th string quartet, in the center of the space, is modulating within 27 spectra : the micro-music tuning (the choice of a specific fundamental, of one of the 27 spectra at any given moment of the macro-form) is for the first time function of the strict duration of that micro-music, i.e.absolute interdependance between pitch and time.

Publications describing his compositional theory include : SOUND PLASMA - MUSIC OF THE FUTURE SIGN, Edition Modern, Munich 1973, and MUSIQUE DE MES UNIVERS, Revue Silences No I, Editions de la DiffCrence, Paris 1985.

His oeuvre consits of over 80 works : for orchestra (TAAROA op. 7, LAMENT0 DI GESU op. 23), large ensemble (IUBIRI op. 43, AWAKENING m op. 53), choir - 48 actual parts (DORUIND op. 27)- children's choir - 34 actual parts (DO EMERGE ULTIMATE SILENCE op. 30), choir - 24 actual parts & 3 sound icons (VETRATA op. 83), 9 orchestras (WILD INCANTESIMO op. 178), six string quartets, chamber orchestras, solo instruments, compositions that were performed or broadcasted on five continents.

On November 3rd 1979 wrote in Paris Olivier Messiaen :
"Horatiu Radulescu is one of the most original young musicians of our time.

We know that in the XXth century - more than in any other - Art and Science go hand in hand.

This is particularly true for the music of Radulescu who has participated in the renewal of musical language".

"DIZZY DIVINITY 1" opus 59 (Turin 1985) is written for flute alone : grand, alto, bass, ... baroque, ... shakuhachi.

The smallest and most variable intervals are reached through fingering changes. The very large intervals are obtained through tremendous dynamics as if there were other polyphonic voices, as a sensation of remembrance of communication at distance (telepathy).

A great majority of the sounds is describing a big crescendo after the initial marcato pp, without any portamento or vibrato.

Secretely, now and then, the voice (singing possibly in falsetto) is "polyphonizing" with the flute, beginning always in unison with the flute but keeping this unique sound (tenuto) during the 5-10 next flute pitches.

On the longer sound appear yellow tremoli ("morse" - like signals due to different fingerings on the same note), irregular, slow or fast, as "palpitating soundstars". The emphasized dynamic of certain pitches is bringing in evidence an F-spectrum (harmonic 6th to 23rd).

The whole melopee gives through its pitch instability the impression of a neobyzantin style of cadences with micro-intervals of a great intrinsic force, with full and passionate sounds which help both performer and audience reach a special state of soul, that of the title.

During the global legatissimo the sudden fingering-changes produce timbre transformations at least in the second formant of the spectrum, the new fingering always arriving on the crescendo climax of the previous sound ! The "spectralmatter", the spectral content of each pitch is instantaneously cut, interrupted by the new fingering as if it was a "danse of timbre-columns". This "danse" should "enter" a sort of polyphony - conceptually and aurally - with the horizontal "danse" of the micro-dynamic sharps.

The performer must try to controll and render independant (by shifting them) these two "danses" : the vertical of pitches/timbres and the horizontal one of dynamics.

This opus 59 was premiered 1985 in Rome by Pierre-Yves Artaud to whom it is dedicated. Scelsi found it was containing "une enorme tristesse".