| Description |
In Mareas (Tides), the dark timbre of the alto flute is immersed in a dark, watery, electronic sea. The bell sounds in the work evoke for me the bells of fishing boats as they toss around in choppy waters. These are sounds I first heard in the port of Valparaíso, Chile as a boy, their rhythm being an unbalanced long-short alternation of two pitches, caused by the tilt and the rocking motion of the boats on the water. In the piece, the alto flute imitates and expands the motives that these bells suggest, and the bells are also the goals of the alto flute's phrases. In writing this piece for Carlton Vickers, I was able to ask for very acrobatic gestures that are not conventionally required of the alto flute. Mareas uses recorded electronic sounds and a MAX delay and flange computer "patch," with 15 effects settings, which processes the live sounds produced by the alto flute as well as the recorded sounds. This live processing helps to integrate the music of the alto flute with the electronics. The delay simply results in the echo effects heard first at the beginning of the piece. The flange patch varies the delay time continuously and results in a kind of Doppler effect where the pitch of the echoes is affected. Towards the end of the piece, as the performer plays very wide alternating leaping gestures that are echoes of the bells heard earlier in the work, waves of sound, consisting of flanged mixtures of alto flute and electronic sounds, envelop the performer as in an ocean of sound. |
