GREENHOUSE CONVERSATIONS
Aerosons
For phonetic microtones and electronic sounds - length: 14’25" (1982)
Linear, intersecting electronic sounds form the basis of Aérosons. At times, these sounds tilt (with drops in height), creating the sensation of a sound voyage. Divisions are then formed in this linearity by blocks of noise (phonetic microsounds) and shorter electronic sounds. After an opening (with sliding sounds), we arrive at the centre of the composition (a planing area with calls at the top, in granular modulations). A final part creates the gradual extinction of the work. These were the days of gliding sounds, easily produced in electronic music.
Annazone
For Mezzo-Soprano (Anna Maria Kieffer) and birdsong - length: 9’03" (1991)
The title here is an anagram, a close analogy between "Amazon" (the Brazilian equatorial forest) and "Annazone" (Zone of Anna, a Brazilian singer). During her childhood, Anna was very impressed by the sounds of the surrounding forests (songs and cries of birds, crackling of insects,…). In the forest, signals are slightly redundant, yet constantly different. No two signals are identical. They are like flowing water, always new. Many sounds, heard from afar, can appear vocalic, even melodic (with allusions to our vocabulary, for example: Kiveliukiu, Piahiuhuu, Kaijakukiké, Jokokoka, Karému, Hojonga, ... or even Bem te vi which means "Well I see you"). The volubility is so strong that one cannot listen to all these sounds and often perceives them as an impenetrable, disorderly jumble of sound.
The singer imitates the song of birds, insects, amphibians, but also invents the song of flowers, butterflies and plants through a language of phonemes, calls and abstract cries. If we accelerate these imaginary songs, an off-beat thing, they join, by their structures, their forms and their rhythms, that of the originals. It is an unconscious transposition of sounds from nature into the vocal.
Lumière sans ombre
Work for Bass (Nicolas Isherwood), monastic sounds and Midi instruments - length: 16’20" (1993)
The sound material of Lumière sans Ombre is of vocal origin (Slavic liturgical chants) and synthetic (sounds produced by frequency modulation. As for Litanéa, the main compositional principle is generalised periodicity. Indeed, the product of the frequency by its periodicity is a unitary constant. The human ear and especially the attentive mind, first detects the period, then, by listening for several periods, the frequency. When this frequency is slow enough, the period acquires an autonomous perception (through its forms) and the perception of a single period allows the mind to predetermine the frequency (this is the perception of the future: in a way, our intuition of reality to come). When a pleasant or beautiful thing periodises, it loses, little by little, some of its beauty. That happens slowly however, retaining a more positive value than something ugly, existing only once. These vocal and phonemic periodicities are coupled with the periodicities of the noises (microsounds coming from oral respiration whether lips, teeth, tongue, uvula or larynx). For listening, just place the bells in the centre (as if the singer) of the two channels. The periods then alternate in waves and balance each other out. The sung language of the bass is abstract (composed). Listening carefully, one perceives the changes in range of modal systems as these modes themselves which makes singing quite difficult for the uninitiated to learn.
Léo Kupper
Léo Kupper was born in avril 16 1935 in Nidrum, Belgium. Composer and theorician, he worked with Henri Pousseur at the first electronic music studio in Belgium, Apelac (1959-62) and was founder and director of the Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives in Brussels (1967) and created Sound Domes in Roma, Linz, Venezia and Avignon (1977-87). In thirty years, he composed around 35 pieces of electronic music, vocal and instrumental music, midi and computer music and wrote about his own research in the field of phonetic and vocal music, musical machines and psycho-acoustics (space perception and diffusion). Leo Kupper is also a fine performer on the Persian santur - he studied with the famour santur player Hossein Malek in Tehran.
GREENHOUSE CONVERSATIONS
Aerosons
For phonetic microtones and electronic sounds - length: 14’25" (1982)
Linear, intersecting electronic sounds form the basis of Aérosons. At times, these sounds tilt (with drops in height), creating the sensation of a sound voyage. Divisions are then formed in this linearity by blocks of noise (phonetic microsounds) and shorter electronic sounds. After an opening (with sliding sounds), we arrive at the centre of the composition (a planing area with calls at the top, in granular modulations). A final part creates the gradual extinction of the work. These were the days of gliding sounds, easily produced in electronic music.
Annazone
For Mezzo-Soprano (Anna Maria Kieffer) and birdsong - length: 9’03" (1991)
The title here is an anagram, a close analogy between "Amazon" (the Brazilian equatorial forest) and "Annazone" (Zone of Anna, a Brazilian singer). During her childhood, Anna was very impressed by the sounds of the surrounding forests (songs and cries of birds, crackling of insects,…). In the forest, signals are slightly redundant, yet constantly different. No two signals are identical. They are like flowing water, always new. Many sounds, heard from afar, can appear vocalic, even melodic (with allusions to our vocabulary, for example: Kiveliukiu, Piahiuhuu, Kaijakukiké, Jokokoka, Karému, Hojonga, ... or even Bem te vi which means "Well I see you"). The volubility is so strong that one cannot listen to all these sounds and often perceives them as an impenetrable, disorderly jumble of sound.
The singer imitates the song of birds, insects, amphibians, but also invents the song of flowers, butterflies and plants through a language of phonemes, calls and abstract cries. If we accelerate these imaginary songs, an off-beat thing, they join, by their structures, their forms and their rhythms, that of the originals. It is an unconscious transposition of sounds from nature into the vocal.
Lumière sans ombre
Work for Bass (Nicolas Isherwood), monastic sounds and Midi instruments - length: 16’20" (1993)
The sound material of Lumière sans Ombre is of vocal origin (Slavic liturgical chants) and synthetic (sounds produced by frequency modulation. As for Litanéa, the main compositional principle is generalised periodicity. Indeed, the product of the frequency by its periodicity is a unitary constant. The human ear and especially the attentive mind, first detects the period, then, by listening for several periods, the frequency. When this frequency is slow enough, the period acquires an autonomous perception (through its forms) and the perception of a single period allows the mind to predetermine the frequency (this is the perception of the future: in a way, our intuition of reality to come). When a pleasant or beautiful thing periodises, it loses, little by little, some of its beauty. That happens slowly however, retaining a more positive value than something ugly, existing only once. These vocal and phonemic periodicities are coupled with the periodicities of the noises (microsounds coming from oral respiration whether lips, teeth, tongue, uvula or larynx). For listening, just place the bells in the centre (as if the singer) of the two channels. The periods then alternate in waves and balance each other out. The sung language of the bass is abstract (composed). Listening carefully, one perceives the changes in range of modal systems as these modes themselves which makes singing quite difficult for the uninitiated to learn.
Léo Kupper
Léo Kupper was born in avril 16 1935 in Nidrum, Belgium. Composer and theorician, he worked with Henri Pousseur at the first electronic music studio in Belgium, Apelac (1959-62) and was founder and director of the Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives in Brussels (1967) and created Sound Domes in Roma, Linz, Venezia and Avignon (1977-87). In thirty years, he composed around 35 pieces of electronic music, vocal and instrumental music, midi and computer music and wrote about his own research in the field of phonetic and vocal music, musical machines and psycho-acoustics (space perception and diffusion). Leo Kupper is also a fine performer on the Persian santur - he studied with the famour santur player Hossein Malek in Tehran.