Author: finevermin

Attributions for Turbulence

ABOUT THE TITLES: Luc Ferrari source recordings used in each of the three movements inspired their titles:

   1. Pleuvoir et Chuchotements: Rain and Whispers
   2. Mélodie Ondulate et Cristalline: Undulating and Crystalline Melody
   3. Machine en Marche: Machine in Motion

ABOUT THE INSTRUMENT: The pipe organ is a four-manual Allen combined with 43 pipe ranks of Swain and Kates design:

ABOUT THE ELECTRONICS: More than 100 electronic cues were prepared by the composer for this piece. Sound files collected by the Association PRESQUE RIEN are a consequence of their ongoing digitization of Mr. Ferrari’s magnetic tapes. The following recordings are used as source material for Turbulence:

   Bistro – chuchotements filles    
   Bistro – mélodie ondulate et cristalline
   Cliquetis rythmique machine
   Creamaille 88 – machine en marche passant de gauche á droite
   Impro-Micro-Acoustique – Prise de son Originale – grave ondulant
   Labyrinthe portrait – les grenouilles
   Le Petit Train de la Mure – Prises de son juillet 1988 – ambiance machines résonnantes au barrage
   Les Anecdotiques – nappe modulante
   Musique Promenade – elements ponctuels brefs
   Pluie á Eze Septembre 1999
   Toscane 1989 – pluie sur le pare-brise

Cues used in the piece adhere to the historic methods of musique concréte, i.e., modifying these original recordings in order to realize new musical ideas and themes while preserving their original aesthetics.  A variety of old and new methodologies were used to prepare the sounds for Turbulence.

Live performance of Turbulence is accomplished using QLab, software widely used for theatrical performances.  All of the audio cues required for Turbulence, bundled with the QLab performance cue sequence, are available upon request from the composer.

Return to Classical

Now I shall tell of the city of Zenobia, which is wonderful in this fashion: though set on dry terrain it stands in high pilings, and the houses are of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and hanging sidewalks, surmounted by cone-roofed belvederes, barrels storing water, weather vanes, jutting pulleys, and fish poles, and cranes.

No one remembers what need or command or desire drove Zenobia’s founders to give their city this form, and so there is no telling whether it was satisfied by the city as we see it today, which has perhaps grown through successive superimpositions from the first, now undecipherable plan. But what is certain is that if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines, with its pilings and its suspended stairways, a Zenobia perhaps quite different, a-flutter with banners and ribbons, but always derived by combining elements of that first model.

This said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

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