Kronarchìa

Kronarchìa, for soprano recorder, two contrabass Paetzold recorders and live electronics, was composed in 2007 for the “PRIME project”, promoted by the Conservatory of Lausanne (www.primeresearch.ch/). The piece, whose title has the double meaning of origin and power of time, is dialectically developed between the melodic peculiarities of the traditional and the Paetzold recorders, the latter being square with a varied palette of percussive articulations. Conceived from an instrumental gesture which generates a rhythm, the work explores different temporal perceptions, all with specific connotations of timbre and articulation. The first is structured by a thick web in which the two Paetzold recorders are characterized with a variable density of articulation; it becomes, in the second, a background over which the new timbre of the soprano recorder, mixed to the performer’s singing voice, emerges. The third part begins like a choral, in which the timbre of all the instruments is merged through the use of multiphonic sounds, till the rhythmical and dynamic climax from the previous section comes back and leads to a sudden end. This is not a final stop, though, because another different time dimension could start from this point on. The electronics amplify in real time the sound result through timbral elaborations (as pitch shifting) and spatialisation processes, which are connected with the evolutions of the dynamics.