Denis Lorrain

Construction 071

ELEMENTA SVNT QVATTVOR

Algorithmic composition for MIDI piano

(2023, total duration: *ca.* 13 mins)

Programme Note

   A spark always stands at the origin of a human creation. Fate, instinct, need, impression, memory, sorrow, hope, perhaps anguish... If only life and consciousness themselves. Music is no exception.

   A musical idea is clear, immediate, and instantly operational in the mind of who grasps it on the fly. All artistic, mathematical, or scientific intuitions are of this nature. It is the laborious realization of the idea, through the slow progression of human consciousness and hand, which lets intuition slip into the verbal realm.

   Afterwards, during the work with the real matter, in the concrete action, the music builds itself, on itself. In wonderment, it reveals its own path. The original beginning of the Construction embeds its entire future development. As the seed conceals within it the entire future plant.

   At the origin of this Construction: the memory of a concert, which inspires the writing of a rhythmic and percussive, metronomic algorithm, which treats the low register of the piano as an extended set of tom-toms, exploiting *Prouhet-Thue-Morse* sequences. This initial algorithm calls for a second one, harmonic by contrast. A third algorithm then joins, melodic, inspired by a process of plant growth, but diverted from the field of application I had initially planned, in such a way that it produces static and repetitive melopeie, with evocations of slow bell change ringings. The latter finally needs to be complemented by a trilling algorithm.

   Thus, in the course of the elaboration, everything follows and coordinates naturally. The composition organises and gives shape to the conjunction of these four musical elements. After completion of the work, one can recognise, by order of appearance: AER, AQVA, TERRA, IGNIS.

   This construction comprises two movements:

  I — 5'46"

 II — 7'24'

DLO

Karlsruhe

February 2023