- Abstractive extensive studies
- Three situation studies
-
Three measurement studies
-
-
Greenwich House, 1957
-
At every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself of the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so.
-
Timecode studies
- Postproductions
-
[number of performers-date-abbreviated venue name]
-
Edgar Varèse and the Jazzmen
-
Piano Reductions
-
Luftlinien
Abstractive extensive studies
4 diagrammatic studies for multiple bowed string instruments
2024
4 diagrammatic studies for multiple bowed string instruments
2024
They are variations on a single gesture consisting of the simultaneous covering of the strings’ and bow’s full lengths. The first study involves multiple occurrences of this gesture. The three subsequent studies are transformations of it in order to approximate a specific point on either the strings or the bow, and eventually both.
The writing of this piece follows from considerations on the epistemological foundations of music and their originary connection to string instruments. Ancient western musical theory, particularly in its Pythagorean form, drew from the divided string not only the principles for musical harmony, but also the proportional laws of the cosmos itself. The string instrument was therefore both a sound generator and an instrument for knowledge production.
The present studies try to prolong this double role of the musical instrument. They are based specifically on the thinking of mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead’s theory of nature, aiming to be compatible with the state of relativistic physics at the end of the XXth century, contains a spatiotemporal theory in which both space and time are considered abstractions of our lived experience and not absolute and inflexible forms in which nature takes place. Instead of a space composed of points and a time composed of instants, both of the notions of point and instant appear as ideal limits of processes of abstraction that originate in the perception of movement. They involve the progressive diminution of temporal or spatial extensions of movements in order to approximate ideal limits within them. The «method of extensive abstraction» is Whitehead’s appellation for this process.
The title of these studies is thus a direct reference to this mental gesture. They present an external model of it and its auditive implications. They are thus an attempt to understand what it means to think through and with instruments. More generally, these studies are embedded in meditations on types rationality going across the arts and other fields of abstract and concrete knowledge.
performances:
12.07.2024, Chiesa San Remigio, Loco (CH)
JACK Quartet
production: IYCA Ticino
audio
12.04.2025, Maison communale de Plainpalais (grande salle), Genève
violin: Virgil Marrel
violin: Leila Duru
viola: Apolline Gruffel
cello: Gabriel Huttin
production: Archipel Festival
score