silhouettes for pierrot ensemble and percussion (2018)

Instrumentation:

Flute, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano, Percussion

Duration: ca. 7’

About the piece:

silhouettes explores the shapes and characteristics of a sound envelope, which consists of the attack, decay, sustain and release. These characteristics are split up and distributed across instruments, or altered to form new sound envelopes, resulting in different timbres and resonances.

This piece also explores indeterminacy, in which performers are given the chance to make decisions about the music, in terms of the order of fragments or notes they play. Similar to a silhouette, these indeterminate sections act like a shadow of the notated ones.

This piece is part of my Final Year Project, which consists of a set of 3 pieces that have an overall theme of exploring timbre and resonance. silhouettes, which is the first piece in the set, specifically focuses on the abstraction of the individual components of sound and orchestrating them into a sextet.

First performance: 

October 2018, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Singapore

Performed by:

Ensemble Phoenix
Christoph Bösch (flute), Toshiko Sakakibara (clarinet), Friedemann Treiber (violin), Martin Jaggi (cello), Ludovic Van Hellemont (piano), Daniel Stalder (percussion), Erik Oña (conductor)