stretto (2005)

Programme Note

The title is inspired by the musical term stretto which is used to describe the overlapping of themes in the exposition of a fugue. It's also inspired by the stretto house , build by the american architect Steven Holl.

At the beginning I composed 12 musical units inspired from 12 terms from Holls essay Intertwining :

fluid space in motion - olfactory - haptic realm - torsion - primordial experience - molecular attraction - concreteness of sensation - mass in tension - time is duration - porous horizon - continous open flux - counterpoise

To assemble those 12 musical units with SuperCollider I used own recorded samples of electric and acoustic guitars.
The whole composition is constructed of one layer of impulses which durations had been modulated by mathematical functions. I used this layer to instrumentate the composition with the 12 musical units to receive a transition between wide and narrow states.

stretto was premiered at ZKM Karlsruhe in November 2005 and has won a residence prize at the 32rd International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art at Bourges, France, in 2005.

Matthias Ockert