Commission Conciertos de LIM – La Recoleta – Buenos Aires – Argentina
performances
Sep 12, 87 – Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural La Recoleta – LIPM
May 18 – 21, 89 – Narni, Scenari dell’Immateriale
Oct 28, 89 – Cagliari, Colloquio di Informatica Musicale
Jun 09, 91 – Bourges, Festival Internationale de Musique Experimentale”Synthese.91″
Feb 09, 92 – Oslo, Norway, Museet for samtidskunst, Aktuell Computermusik.
Oct 17, 98 – Centro Sociale 02, Trent’anni di musica in Europa (1960/1990)
As the years go by, I feel more and more that the job of a music writer is simply to mediate between the sound and the listener.
Icarus is the reworking of “Titanic & Icarus s.p.a.” for one percussionist and four vibration exciters.
The sound generators are three suspended cymbals and two tam-tams that are put into vibration by means of electromechanical exciters with a feedback device and with sine wave generators.
With this system, percussion instruments acquire unusual characteristics, very different from the sounds that these instruments normally produce.
These are sounds with a very pure spectrum and without attack, with the possibility of obtaining notes
of different pitches for each instrument.
Inside this self-sufficient machine the action of the percussionist is not aimed at generating further sounds, but at varying those already present by placing sticks of various types on the vibrating body, which serve to give a different tonal characteristic depending on the type of material. which constitutes them.
In this version, unlike the one performed live, the sounds generated by the acoustic instruments are reworked electronically by digital signal processors.
In the making of “Icarus”, this idea leads the composer more and more into the structure of the sound. The temporal organization structure of the entire composition is therefore derived from the sound.
The beginning and the end of the piece are made up of a very gradual trend (a long crescendo for the beginning and a long decrescendo for the end). They are considered as transition elements from the external world into the sound and vice versa.
Icarus was made between the spring and autumn of 1987.