François Paris

Roque

Violoncello solo
violoncelle et electronique
Commissioned by CIRM (with state support) and spring Arts de Monte-Carlo (with the support of the SOGEDA)
Created April 4, 2004, as part of the Spring Festival of Arts de Monte-Carlo, Monaco (France), Alexis Descharmes (cello), Tech CIRM, Tom Mays and Frederic Voisin (computer music) --- Traces I for cello and electronics opens a cycle of solo pieces with real time transformation. In the manner of a personal diary, the successive Traces will address the compositional problematic of the moment I 'll write them. My intention was to create an environment that, by electronics means, transforms and transcends the space and nature of the soloist. Traces I is a diptych that opposes two conceptions of musical time, two sound behaviors and two formal elaborations. The first one is constructed in a suspended (no pulsation) musical time environment. Dynamic cello lines, swipe the space as well as the registers of the cello which are ' multiplied ' by its treatment. A granular suspended texture is formed with the sediments and traces left by those lines. This movement has a linear character and the cello plays with a full and, through its treatement, an exuberant sound. To this full sound of the first panel corresponds an intimate sound of the second. This character results acoustically by the use of a lead mute in the cello, which is corroborated electronically by the use of different types of filtering. Contrasting with the linearity of the first panel, this one has a circular form: One layer, is formed by a six-measure pizz phrase, once it is played, it is recorded by Max's real time sampler and then looped until the end of the piece, following predetermined transpositions that occur in an aleatoric way. On top of this kind of passacaglia like layer, other objects, more ethereal and ' fantasques ' take place. The circular form of this pannel, as oppose to the first, occurs in a pulsated environment.