Intimate Rituals

Recorded at the Temple du Bon Secours, Paris, 2005. The Sound Icon is a concert grand piano vertically placed and played with bows. From 12 page booklet: "In 2003, I composed Intimate Rituals XI (a work for viola) using the tape of the pre-recorded sound icons with a viola in a spectral scordatura, a very special tuning-chord; the open strings simulate the 3rd, 4th, 13th and 20th harmonics of an F monesis, giving C half-sharp, F half-sharp, a slightly lower D, and A half-sharp. With this scordatura you have also the presence of the 7th harmonic in the air; the 3rd and 4th harmonics in sum give 7, and the 13th and 20th harmonics in difference also give 7. So the 7th is there too, in the subconscious, even though it is not directly present. The piece is dedicated to Vincent Royer; it was composed in Clarens / Montreux, in 2003 and premiered by him in Chicago. The timing is very strict; the techniques are those already known from Das Andere and Lux Animae but otherwise activated; the macro-form is also directed by the Fibonacci proportions. The viola is in a constant dialogue with the sound icons (I don't like to think of the piece as viola and tape; ideally the sound icons would be live). The viola and the sound icons are dependent on each other, sometimes crossing, sometimes not. There are very intense moments as the sound icons describe a high register climax at the Golden Section; the viola attains its highest sounds there too and then decays, very strangely, reaching again in the low the richest timbres. Intimate Rituals are very private, maybe even erotic, situations. From the original recording of the sound icons in the Lucero studio in Versailles in 1986 to the premiere of Intimate Rituals XI with the viola in 2003 is a big span of 17 years, but the same atmosphere should be achieved, a sort of spiritual intimacy." Horatiu Radulescu, Amsterdam