Audio: The Melancholic

from Julian Cafarella, 30.01.10

This music began life as a remix in 12 tone (normal)  temperament of a piece I made recently in a non-standard tuning.

       In searching for a name for the piece it struck me that the name here could take on more importance than I had at first imagined.  For this remix has a dark and tragic quality not present in the original and which surprised me .

     The editing which followed the initial remix transformed the musical meaning further and what I now regard as, in a sense, a piece of 'virtual music'  came into being. "Virtual' because the distance between the original microtonal gestures and their realization in sound  as a diatonic music creates a context in which sound is not as not fully anchored to intention as it usually is in diatonic music.

   I became aware that this transformation of contexts gave me a music which whilst appearing to be anchored in the expression of intense grief as such, also reflected on its means of expression (not without a certain irony).
 
   I was reminded (at risk of drawing down what would be invidious comparisons), of the 3rd movement of Carl Nielsen's 2nd Symphony ('The Four Temperaments') which is entitled 'andante malincolio' and is also both deeply felt yet with what seems to be intended irony is  at a distance from the 'subject' matter which it is  intended to frame or invoke, namely (according to Nielsen) the Melancholic temperament

  Keeping all this in mind I have called this piece 'The Melancholic' but I wish to qualify what might be read into this title by saying that this is music, which together with its title, reflect with a certain irony on the tension between the grief which it appears and wants to express in a naive sense  and what might in other circumstances or in a different kind of discourse be taken to stand for the categorical meaning of grief as such.

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Tags

• Music & Audio
• Experimental
• sound quality

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