Unremembered Soundscapes: Musical Images of Iran
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2014-12-15
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Unremembered Soundscapes, is focused on the development of advanced techniques in composition and sound design applied to traditional Iranian musical material, soundscapes and sound objects. I am curious to see if a new musical language can be created that transforms ancient musical materials through the use of current Western performance practice and digital technologies. This is explored in the context of a large multi-movement work for violin, bass clarinet and piano, along with live and prerecorded electroacoustic music.
The piece is in five connected movements, each based on one of the traditional Iranian professions. The first movement, “a tapestry of glass”, is based on the Persian art of carpet weaving. Sounds such as those of the warps and wefts, scissoring, or combing, serve as the sound material for the electroacoustic part, whereas the graphical design of the carpet inspires the macro and micro musical structures. “A curl in ink” reflects on the Persian art of calligraphy. In this movement one can hear seagulls and other creatures that seem to be hidden in the sound of a bamboo pen on a glossy paper. The third movement, “a fluff of smile”, draws upon sounds involved in the old Iranian professions of cotton-fluffing and felting such as the resonant sound of the bow-shaped fluffing tool. The sounds in “a breath of tea” come from the soundscapes of traditional Iranian teahouses, like the sound of the samovar, the bubbling hookah, and the small glass teacup and saucer. Finally, “dust of aged hands” makes use of the sounds of etching and coppersmithing that were recorded in an aged bazaar in Isfahan.
In concert, along with the musicians on stage, the computer performer triggers sonic material and controls parameters of audio processing in real-time. Physical gestures and motions are tracked by a motion capture device and mapped to sound processing parameters in the Max software on the computer.
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Nader Esfahani, A. (2014). Unremembered Soundscapes: Musical Images of Iran (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28593