S'io non miro non moro 2012
Soprano and live electronics
After a madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo
Commisioned by the Schola Heidelberg as part of a project of re-compositions of Gesualdo's madrigals, this piece takes up Gesualdo's particular tonality. The two "interfaces", the beginning and end of the original madrigal - which is flanked by my version -, act as the source of all intervals in my version. Analysing the beginning („s'io non miro non moro“) yields eleven pitches per octave - not a single interval conforms to equal tempered tuning. In the end („e'l morir morte“), there are even fourteen different pitches in an octave - among which are "microtones" of all kinds (see the appendix of the score). The real-time electronics enable a detailed work on these microtones. The singer is never "alone", but is continually transposed into chords of four to five voices. She is, as it were, masked by the electronics. She is joined by other, mostly percussive, sounds, all of which are generated live.
In this production (2014) with Angela Postweiler (Soprano) and Hwa-Kyung Yim (Keyboard) there is a montage of Gesualdo's madrigal in between the two halves of my composition.