Aorko (2006/2009)

for viola and live digital signal processing
16’
for Jessica Rona
with thanks to and inspiration from William Lane and Alexander Bruck-Santos
WP May 2009, Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium, Frankfurt a. M.
Jessica Rona

Edition Juliane Klein Order No.: EJK0340

Score Preview (Publisher, pdf)

Aorko (for solo viola with 3 loudspeakers – 2009) is based on my piece Maiko (for solo viola – 2006). In Maiko I attempted to apply the structures of jokes stemming from Sigmund Freud’s book »Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Bewusstsein« to music. Techniques, as Freud describes them, such as re-ordering, double meanings, repeating similar material “full and empty”, or with or without meaning, which I applied to musical materials, without attempting to achieve humorous results.

At the same time I explored the especially witty relationships between space, time and pitch continuums. This can be observed in the position of the finger pressing different points on the string and the dissimilar exponential distance between the pitches. In the score the dimensions of time and pitch are depicted in space, requiring a spatial interpretation from the musician, who plays in a three-dimensional room.

In Aorko this multidimensionality is once again amplified, in that the central ideas in Maiko now are applied to a live-processed electronic level. Three loudspeakers are need for the performance, building with the viola a virtual string quartet – an implementation of the old viola joke: “Announcement in the newspaper: Famous, established string quartet seeks 2 Violins and a Cellist for concert activities.” This virtual string quartet I have created allowed me to apply micro-variation to infinitely linkable parameters, until double meanings transform into polysemy and the three dimensional room becomes n-dimensional.

Annesley Black