Areolae Undant
Instrumentation | original: contrabass clarinet, english horn, 2 cellos, 2 percussionists | can vary
Date | 2017
Duration | 15’ (25’)
Premiere | premiered by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, John McCowen, Kyle Bruckmann, Theresa Wong, Marissa Deitz, Jacob Felix Heule and William Winant at Signal Flow Festival, 2017.
The title of the piece is in latin and roughly means “circular areas swell”, while also alluding to organic matter, “areola”. It is a slowly building, repetitive piece, by and large based on a score, and a sub-score - the score repetitive and protean in essence, and the sub-score a controlled improvisation. It was written with performers possessing a specific skill set in mind; performers with intuitive interpretative abilities are needed.
An undertaking of constructing an environment of fluctuating dominance and individual mandate, Areolae Undant also becomes a form of visual meditation, with strong repetitive visual stimuli as a focal point inherent in the work in the form of a “light conductor”, centrally located. Tonally it has a basis in fundamentals which deviate and evolve over the course of the piece.
The work is conducted visually by a system of lights that are controlled by a “light conductor”, using a light fixture fitted with sensors. The conductor controls through the sensory input a computational algorithm which prompts six instrumentalists through lights. These six performers are configured in a circular arrangement within the perforamance space, surrounding the light conductor and preferably with the audience in between. As the piece continues, the algorithm undergoes subtle changes affecting the prompts given to the instrumentalists - who are also following a notated score through which they progress over time.
“On the one hand, there was something bleak, even harsh, about the musical landscape it inhabited (hardly unusual for an Icelandic composer), the players arranged at the edges of the stage, articulating a mixture of low register textural noises and squally overtones and multiphonics. Often this happened in complete darkness, the work being haphazardly lit by a collection of intermittently flashing lights. Yet on the other hand, its actual and figurative blackness was surprisingly inviting, offering access to a sonic space where things were being fashioned in a completely new way. It felt amorphous, nascent, like a sonic equivalent of the embryonic mush in a chrysalis, in the process of becoming something new, the lights an accompanying bioluminescence.”
- on Areolae Undant performed by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir and Esbjerg Ensemble, Nordic Music Days 2019
