three pieces for playerpiano, MIDI piano, or sampled piano:
1. … des pierres qui parlent…
2. … des pierres enchaînées… 3. … des pierres apprivoisées… 4’40”
translation of the piece title: … tamed stones…
This piece, … tamed stones…,
was composed from the interest generated in me by the discovery, in the beginning of the 80’ of last century, of the music
of Conlon Nancarrow and his player pianos, which allow to break the human physical limits of the interpreter. I composed this
piece thinking in these limits I was able to get over, at the same time, speed, quantity and superposition of notes, but I
didn’t have a player piano to test it. Many years later, I took the piece off the drawer to program it for MIDI piano,
this digital instrument which allows to play from a computer or a sequencer, independently from the physical characteristics
of an interpreter, the most complex musical structures, and afterwards, I made a version for sampled piano. MIDI and digital
technologies add to the characteristics of the player piano the ability to vary nearly till the infinite the sound dynamics.
To tame a world without limits, to make the stone singing, the dream is primarily the fruit of imagination… So expressed
already Edgard Varèse: «I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole
new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.» (in
Dada Review 391, nº 5, june 1917, New York, translated from the French by Louise Varèse).
