| text | Synophonie for Clarence is an ensemble and live electronics work inspired by the formal and sonic principles of Clarence Barlow’s Sinophony I (1970), his first electronic composition. Rather than functioning as an arrangement or transcription, this piece operates as an instrumental extension of Barlow’s electronic sound world, translating and reactivating its core materials through acoustic performance and real-time electronic processes. The work seeks to bring into the physical space of performance elements that, in Sinophony I, exist only in fixed media: continuous tones, slow harmonic transformations, beating frequencies, and the perceptual tension between purity and instability. These characteristics are reimagined here as a living, performative situation, where instrumental sound and electronics merge into a single, evolving spectral body. Synophonie for Clarence builds on methods developed by Juan Parra Cancino to extract performative salients from early electronic works—elements that can be embodied, negotiated, and reshaped by performers in real time. Through this approach, the piece revisits historical electronic material not as an object to be preserved unchanged, but as a dynamic field for exploration, experimentation, and renewed artistic engagement. The aim is not reconstruction, but continuation: to recover underlying processes and extend their implications into contemporary performance practice. By situating acoustic instruments, live electronics, and spatialized sound within a shared listening ecology, the work foregrounds collective tuning, timbral fusion, and emergent beating phenomena as central musical forces. The ensemble functions less as a group of independent voices than as a composite oscillator, shaped by subtle interactions and shared attention. This piece is conceived as a tribute to Clarence Barlow—composer, educator, and friend—honoring both his pioneering contributions to electronic music and his enduring influence on ways of thinking about sound, structure, and musical intelligence. TECHNICAL RIDER Technical Setup Live Performance of Sinophonie for Clarence AUDIO: • Quadraphonic Sound system (4 active speakers and, ideally, a subwoofer or passive: 4 speakers and a power mixer of 8 inputs and 8 outputs. • Analog Mixer onstage of at least 8 channels of input and 8 of output (Mackie 1604, MIDAS Venice VU16, or similar) • Audio cables (8 jacks of at least 3 m., plus the necessary cables to connect the 4 outputs of the mixing desk to the FoH) • 1 Computer for presentation PROVIDED • 1 Audio interface for live electronics and sound projection PROVIDED • iPad for live electronics PROVIDED Instruments (to be amplified): violin, cello, double bass, trumpet, bassoon, bass clarinet, live electronics. All instruments should be amplified and are processed live by the electronics performer (me). I will be on stage with the rest of the group. All musicians should be microphoned, and I will need 3 processing signals coming from the FOH (balanced jacks) (tp+vl in aux 1, bassoon+cello in aux 2, bass clarinet and doublebass in Aux 3. From the audio interface, 4 signals (analog, balanced Jack) will go back to FOH. I will provide a MOTU Ultralite AVB as an interface. About the sound amplification The quadraphonic setup is placed around both the audience and the musician, with the back speakers, if possible, facing away or indirectly toward the walls and ceiling, but not directly toward the audience. This is to make the sound image as blurred as possible. In venues where the sound system renders this impractical, additional, smaller monitor speakers, to be used as a complement, or in place of the main PA, could be required. In terms of setup, I will have a computer, a small MIDI controller, and a soundcard on stage. Monitoring: Monitoring might be needed depending on where the front stereo PA is located. SCORE: For timing/coordination, each performer should have a stopwatch to be used as a (loose) reference. Alternatively, I can prepare a digital version of the score, that can be loaded on iPads using the ‘decibel score player’ ((https://decibelnewmusic.com/decibel-scoreplayer/), but this requires an iPad per performer and might take up too much rehearsal time to set up. I will be place slightly in front of the rest of the ensemble, so providing visual cues for each page transition is an option. Light: Soft light for the performers. If paper scores are used, lights on the stands might be needed. STAGING: all seven musicians should be in a semicircle, with the highest registered instruments on the edges, and the lower instruments near the middle. The live electronics performer should be at the center, to help provide visual cues (start of each minute), and better react with the live electronics processing (see score for a diagram). FURNITURE for the live electronics: • 1 table of about 1m × 1,5m (for mixing desk) • 1 music stand • 1 small lamp (or reading light) • Power strip with at least 6 connections |
|---|---|
| lang | en |
| has_documentation_object | <not specified>  |