RAU

ENSEMBLE

Commissioned by: Westdeutschen Rundfunks, Köln & Casa da Música Porto
Premiere: Casa da Música, Porto, 2013, Remix Ensemble, Peter Rundel


The most fascinating thing about the word, whether written or spoken, is the variety of levels of perception that are stimulated. Content and writing or content and sound are inseparable from each other and present in equal parts.
If we set out to ignore the semantic part of the text we are left with just the sound on the one hand and, on the other hand, something that usually does not want to be communicated: noise. Information theory tells us that semantics is the most important and valuable thing, and that everything else is a communication disruption. The graphologist, on the other hand, is not interested in the content of the text, and would be able to extract the most varied psychological interpretations from the handwriting noise.
It is in this context that those who deal with concepts such as composition, sonification, sound, noise, and word work. The rough surface of language: the moment between abstract and empirical perception.
RAU for ensemble is based on an authentic recording from the South of Portugal (link), in which two ladies recite at very high speed popular sayings, the so-called tongue twisters. The centre of the compositional speculations comes from the multiple combinations and permutations of vowels and consonants, melodies and percussive sounds found in the spoken phrases. With the help of software created for this propose, an analysis is made that serves as the basis for the entire compositional process.

Excerpt from the live recording at Casa da Música, 29.10.2013
Remix Ensemble, Peter Rundel


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