Pixel

Barblina Meierhans

clarinette basse, contrebasse, électronique, guitare électrique, percussion, violon

durée: 17'

2019

Interprètes
Anne Gillot
Aurélien Ferrette
Jocelyne Rudasigwa
Emilio Guim

This piece is an essay to ask about form, picture and sound in a most general way. The idea was to reduce the compositional method on cutting and/or holding, let's say to work as in early electronic compositions (magnetic tape) only with horizontal extensions and limitations of textures, situations and fragments. No narrative, melodic or figurative continuation in focus, neither sound manipulation nor noise streching. In this circumstances, at which point do we recognize and perceive form ? And how starts in a composition a formal process ? Is it possible to think form as a content, and the act of composing as a compositional material itself ? The result of asking such questions got to the starting point of this study and led me at the same time to a more basic question: where and when does a composition beginn at all ? An initial impulse could be the surface of my writing desk. Or is it nevertheless the evoked but idealized idea, pixel-like, clear, pure and brilliant ? Is it maybe my impression and the interplay of an ensemble or a musician ? Or is it simply a need to escape the pressure of the white page in front of me ? To ask such questions feels like taking the challenge to create a circle only by painting rectangular lines – it’s a never ending story.
This piece is freely inspired by Georges Perec’s Notes concernant les objets qui sont sur ma table de travail. It’s a succession of snapshots and trivialities: some rough and sometimes clumsy sonorities.
„A pixel can only depict an approach to reality. The midpoint of a pixel signify in reality the pixel itself.“

Concerts
Compound _ Festival Archipel 2019