...Jusqu'à l'afflux...

Jusqu’à l’afflux…. (2016) explores the interactions between air, sound and gesture. Here, the afflux (flow) of air is not only understood as a possible way to (re)create a form of harmony, with its own texture and timbre, but also developed as a moving and fluctuating element. The work explores the multiple technical and instrumental possibilities that may recreate a pathway through air, sound and timbre.

These possibilities are almost infinite. Multiple combinations of air, multiphonics, additional noises or frequencies can be achieved through the combination of various instrumental techniques. An exploration of the playing on or with the different parts of the instrument, the combination of syllables, voice, and air, but also the inclusion of human voice are some elements developed through the piece. Several specific instrumental gestures, such as repeated “spazzolato” (brushed) motions on strings, the use of the clarinet as an amplification of voice and breath contribute to the general flow. Thus, the performers are considered as a whole “corps sonore”, participating with their technique, with their gesture, with their voice in the general musical poetics of the piece.

Textures formed by multiphonic and inharmonic sonorities tend to compose a "static" response to this flux. They represent an additional form of air and sound interaction - as complex mixes of air and additional frequencies themselves.

The work ultimately addresses the poetic and aesthetic question of what precedes the sound and what continues the sound, as the piece starts as it ends, in a vanishing flow of air and (human) respiration…

Commissioned by the Sound thought Festival and Conference 2016. Premiere: Glasgow New Music expedition, Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow.

https://soundcloud.com/martin-loridan/afflux