In 1609, Galileo Galelei went with the lens and the telescope became the microscope. This turn is very connected to the minuscule, farthest st being made next to the closest st. The same technology that would allow us to see large bodies in space would also allow us to see tiny objects: the cells that make up the great life on earth. Eventually, I discovered that the same things out there in space were with us.
A piece by Georg Friedrich Haas at the Park Avenue Armory, titled 11,000 threads So that the strings are heard on fifty pianos – yes, they call the composer, they need two actions of telescoping and amplification, it is only heard, not light, it is his method. The result is a function of great width and the ability to reach, with a certain pivot of the lens, impressive close-ups.
The piece, making its North American Premiere after its first performance in Bolzano two years ago, has a technical observation in it that I will fail to describe negatively,
When the violin runes its strings are finely tuned in fifths, this interval is a fraction (almost exactly one-fiftieth of a semitone) higher than the Fifth’s Fifth. If each of the 50 pianos is tuned to this very small time, then there is a perfect perfect fifth, for example, between the C of the first piano and the G of the second piano. The same applies between the C of the second and the G of the piano’s third (one-fifth of a semitone higher), between the C of the third and the G of the piano’s fourth, and so on. After 50 pianos, the circle closes, and the fifth is raised by a semitone.
However, there is no need to worry. One does not need a course in acoustical physics or a well-tuned ear, however, to feel the power 11,000 threads; One that needs only the ears and the opening to be covered, the love that is heard as it is given, the opening to make them mean something all your own.
This is an episode of great precision that is both exciting and unreliable. It requires a completely modern approach – a number of synchronized iPads, all timed in milliseconds to allow the configuration of pianos, which, with instruments, surround the audience on all sides. Fifty pianos and twenty-five instruments, here, members of the Austrian Ensemble Klangforum Wien are not conducted; They play, alone, against their stopwatches. The store is probably the only place in the city that can and will put this fashion, and here it is not included: only cleaning lavender, pink, and blue light and metals.
11,000 threads There appear almost tectonic shifts, from the place of ultimate simplicity – the place with C majors, first heard on the piano but on the harpsichord. It starts from there it doesn’t move, but outside, it repeats and expands into huge sounding plates that move and collide. Teasing Timpani, Wheefing, breathing microphones, roaring bass, bass trombone bass and many other instruments, are often heard rather than heard, all vie listeners pay attention.
Octave, chord, scale – these are the building blocks of our musical world, but we are used to seeing the forest of music, so that we can speak, that we do not think of the wonder of the trees. The sonic artifacts can be simple enough, but the “simple” things are the result of thousands of years of history and countless decisions by people, remembered and explained. The piano, now intelligent, is a marvel of engineering; Its apparent power was shaping epochs. The large scale can be derived from the mathematical calculations of the Evertumatical series, but it also shows the agreement, one person to another: about what they like, about what how do they build play together.
11,000 threads It discovers the beauty and disorder of such human conventions by emphasizing the low power of “simple” things. Tremolo, glissando: What wonders, not what they are, but to quickly make them understand, to hear from them thunder, or waves, or rain. By hearing such things on a micro- and telescopic level, in fact, placed within them and absorbed by them, we hear arew. When, after a while, the back row of Chilo was around us, I felt overcome, close to tears. I remember thinking, “How wonderful it is to live in a world with chords and pianos and people to hear.” And then I started laughing with great joy.
Perceived or not, the effect of Haas microtones is a matter of relationship. Fifty pianos, he suggests, can agree in the same way that people can, by never ending the difference. Absolute ownership, that’s a Sine Wave Generator thing, not flesh and wood and metal. This small pass is aligned – which is present, and concreted here – to give the sound its timbre, making it a random mesh instead of a single crisp line in the graph. Best are the times when, through a combination of excessive conflict, each individual’s musical timbre seems to blur or hybridize with that of the other. Sound is how we know our world, but we are reminded that that knowledge is a conditional and intimate conflict between us and the world.
Sometimes, it’s surprising that you listen with your eyes open, if only to see how well your ears can be deceived. At times, Haas’s compositions are so rich and all-encompassing that it’s best to just surrender to them with your eyes closed. There is no equivalent in our oculocentric language of the twin movements of telescopes and microscoping objects, but one can hear what cannot be said.
Haas dismisses the trend as an “experiment” — “You’re not going to tempt people,” but it results in a monumental discovery, nonetheless.
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