Music Current 2024 Notes Blackpageorchestra

BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA
4/4/24, PROJECT ARTS THEATRE
Austrian new music group Black Page Orchestra are renowned for their bold and fearless
approach to music commissioning, programming and performance. Well-established on
the continental festival circuit, here, on their first visit to Ireland, Black Page Orchestra
present three works by composers closely associated with the ensemble – Mirela Ivicevic
(Croatia), Matthias Kranebitter (Austria), and Vladimir Gorlinski (Russia) – as well as three
new commissions written specially for this event, including a new work by Peter Ablinger
(Austria), perhaps one of the most recognisable and poetic voices in contemporary
music, and two new Black Page Orchestra commissions by Irish composers Amanda
Feery and Fergal Dowling.
Mirela Ivicevic, Dream Work (2018), for baritone saxophone, e-guitar, piano, percussion, electronics and
film, 11'
Amanda Feery, Hireth* (2024), for saxophone, e-guitar, piano, percussion and electronics
“I turn to my computer like a friend

I need deep understanding
Give me deeper understanding”
- Kate Bush, ‘Deeper Understanding’
In 2019 I was part of a theatre production where, as part of a vocal quartet, we had to
sing Haydn’s round, ‘Death is a Long Sleep’. When practicing at home, I discovered a
version of the round on Youtube, made in a program called Virtual Singer. I was
immediately struck by the uncanny timbre of her voice, and honestly in the beginning it
made my skin crawl, but as I practiced with her, I realised it was one of the saddest voices
I’ve ever heard.
I named the voice Elba, and Hireth is an aria-lament I’ve written for her.
I liked the idea of pairing an old musical form with a disembodied voice. Elba’s
declarations are unclear - sonically and textually. The timbral space her voice inhabits
means the text is often muddled. All we know from the text is that she’s searching for
some kind of clarity to do with something she’s yearning for, trying to understand did it
exist or not. A place, a person, a sound; it is not revealed.
Hireth is the Cornish (and Welsh) word that can be roughly translated to ‘longing’; a
yearning for something you have lost or may have never existed.
The text for Hireth was written by Declan Synnott.
I have been looking

I have been searching
Looking
With my ears wide open
My whole body
Searching
Searching, searching even in my sleep
I feel you
But I don’t see you
Our heart
Our heart disembodied
Detached by my nature
I know when I find you
I’ll know you never left
Outwards
Finding a core
Matthias Kranebitter, pitch study no.2 / the 88 piano keys (2022), for piano and keyboard, 19'
The piece treats each key of the piano in an informative, disinformative, narrative, musical
or non-musical way, starting in order from the lowest to the highest note.
The individual octaves form 7 chapters. During the composition, the listener learns,
among other things, to distinguish the rustling of wind in different types of trees, how the
physical condition of guinea pigs can be changed by 8-hour exposure to a 116 hertz
frequency, how the 2mm insect Lesser Waterboatman achieves a sound of 96 dB with its
penis, at which cytological position in the genome of the fruit fly one can adjust the pitch
of its mating call, or how often the "a" occurs in all 32 Beethoven sonatas.
No animals were harmed for the piece, except for one.
Fergal Dowling, Total Harmonic Distortion (2024), for clarinet, e-guitar, piano, percussion and electronics
In electronic communications and audio signal processing, “total harmonic distortion”,

refers to the deformation of the original waveform caused by the transmission apparatus.
In digital communications it is assumed that signal reproduction is completely faithful. In
fact, the presence of a perfect digital copy proves that the original signal was not a
random stream of 1s and 0s, but that it has some meaning, and that it refers to
something beyond itself.
We might compare distortion in electronic communication systems to misunderstanding

or disagreement in human speech. But in digital communications, where the signal is
faithfully reproduced, there is no room for disagreement — the message must be correct!
Nowadays, it might seem somewhat trite to discuss the ubiquity of digital

communication devices, but as our direct experience of the world is increasingly replaced
by screen-mediated experience, it is worth reminding ourselves how much this affects
our relationships with friends, family, colleagues, art, literature, music, history, our sense
of place and sense of time, and, well, everything.
In relationships mediated by digital communications, there is little room for disagreement

— neither technically nor literally. Two worlds have emerged — the real physical world we
can see, and its parallel, screen-mediated, digital simulacrum. Either the simulacrum is a
perfect copy and these worlds agree totally, or they don’t agree at all.
“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an

immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into
a representation. The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common
stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of
reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be
looked at. The specialisation of images of the world has culminated in a world of
autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete
inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.”
Guy Debord, “The Society of the Spectacle” (1967)
Peter Ablinger, The Absolute Absolute (The World Will Smile)* (2024), for 4 instrumentalists, their voices,
electronics
Vladimir Gorlinski, The Reason (2014), for tenor saxophone, e-guitar, piano, percussion and video, 10'
BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA
BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA, founded 2014 in Vienna, is an ensemble for radical and
uncompromising music of current times. The name derives from Frank Zappa’s
composition the black page, a piece which score is due to the high density of notes and
musical events nearly a black paper. Beside this clear aesthetical approach the ensemble
focuses on compositions using electronics, video and different technologies in an artistic
context as well as pieces with performative character.
PERFORMERS
Florian Fennes, clarinets / saxophones
Ruben Mattia Santorsa, e-guitar
Alfredo Ovalles, piano / keyboard
Igor Gross, percussion
Matthias Kranebitter, electronics

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BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA

4/4/24, PROJECT ARTS THEATRE

“I turn to my computer like a friend

- Kate Bush, ‘Deeper Understanding’

The text for Hireth was written by Declan Synnott.

I have been looking

No animals were harmed for the piece, except for one.

In electronic communications and audio signal processing, “total harmonic distortion”,

We might compare distortion in electronic communication systems to misunderstanding

Nowadays, it might seem somewhat trite to discuss the ubiquity of digital

In relationships mediated by digital communications, there is little room for disagreement

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an

BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA

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