La cloche sans vallees

Programme Note

The idea of a "cantus firmus" using an gregorian melody as a bass line for a new composition is the model for "La cloche sans vallees". In the same way that the cantus firmus uses an already existing melody the piece "La vallee des cloches" from the cycle "Miroir" composed by Maurice Ravel is used as the source for the new composition.
It is the intention to put a new structure above the source piece so that an interaction between the original piece and the algorithmically determined parameters of the composition is developed. This results in a mixture between different time concepts: the listener switches in the process of perception between the algorithmic level and the level of the source piece depending of what is more significant. For example in the case that sound grains are long enough and not heavily processed, the listener recognises the source sound. But if there would be a ritardando of short grains he would perceive the structure of the algorithm instead.
The most important algorithmical structure is the ritardando and accelerando (slowing down and speeding up). This idea is used consequently so that the first 560 seconds of the piece were completely transposed up 7 times until this time-window, the transposition, collapses into a click. Beginning with this click a ritardando which opens up the small time window is performed exploring its new contents. In the middle of the piece a quote appears as a mirror (original plus a cancer, reflecting the time continuity) referring to the cycle "Miroir" and to the symmetric formal structure of the source piece.
The signal processing techniques applied to the source sounds are reduced to simple processes: pointer operations, forward backward reading and sampling rate conversion.

The work was composed 1993 as the last one of a trilogy using compositions of Maurice Ravel. It was generated at the Next net of the "Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics" at the Stanford University with William Schottstaedts Common-Lisp-Music and Rick Taube's Common-Music as well as with Paul Lanski's RT mixing program.