Works
Action concert pieces | 2019

Cartilago auris, magna et irregulariter formata

New performance:  4.6.2020
Frankfurt

ON STREAMING from the Oper Frankfurt

Ensemble Modern, Peter Tilling, conductor

https://oper-frankfurt.de/de/spielplan/happy-new-ears/?id_datum=2451

PRESENTATION
The pianist performs on the keyboard. Two operators are around the open piano, transforming the sounds produced by the pianist with different material and actions, without interrupting the performance's flux.
The two operator are also Dr. Johann Wagner and Carl von Rokitansky, who on the 27th of March 1827 have done the first autopsy of the auditive system of Beethoven, both bent over Beethoven's ear, the piano internal system.
According to them, the outer ear was very large and irregular in shape ("Cartilago auris, magna et irregulariter formata").  Their meticulous account, in their imperial Latin, reveals that they were seeking to explain the enigma of the transmission of musical language and to discover the mystery of the perception's mechanism itself.
Like mysterious agents of the auditive system, the two operators try to analyze and decode the sound productions of the pianist, creating different colours, spectras, ultrasounds, negative images of the playing river.
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