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TITHON(Opus 62)
May 198910'10Electroacoustic
Oeuvre complète
Notice
This piece was composed in 1989 on the UPIC graphic synthesizer and premiered the same year at the Lille Festival. Like many of my other works, Tithon uses sound structures borrowed from the animal world. Here, the model is a single insect recording lasting several minutes. A dynamic envelope has been extracted from it, featuring both large-scale contrasts and a host of micro-rhythms that appear, rather like a microscope, only under the effect of temporal enlargement. This is because each of the “bow strokes” made by the insect’s paw produces short noises which themselves carry variations due to the insect’s morphology and gesture.
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Automatic extraction of this complex dynamic envelope by the Upic system enables these rhythms to be combined, varying tempi, dynamics, densities, pitches and timbres. Virtually the entire work features variations on a single graphic contour, interpreted in a variety of ways, in a quasi-fractal manner. Just at the end of the work, the natural model that gave rise to it is revealed, sampled by Upic.
A number of sounds have also been extracted from sound models, while others have been derived by frequency modulation. The quasi-vocal sequences are effectively built on vocal material, by automatic waveform extraction. The final mix was made on an 8-track tape recorder, then reduced to ordinary stereo.
The mood of Tithon is linked both to the characteristic sounds of summer and to Greek mythology. Aurora, out of love for Tithon, obtained from Zeus his escape from the mortal condition. But she forgot to claim eternal youth for him too, and watched her lover grow older day by day, shrivelling indefinitely without being able to die, until, out of pity, the gods changed him into a dry, grey cicada. The metamorphosis has not abolished his love, and he persists in greeting the dawn every morning.
A number of sounds have also been extracted from sound models, while others have been derived by frequency modulation. The quasi-vocal sequences are effectively built on vocal material, by automatic waveform extraction. The final mix was made on an 8-track tape recorder, then reduced to ordinary stereo.
The mood of Tithon is linked both to the characteristic sounds of summer and to Greek mythology. Aurora, out of love for Tithon, obtained from Zeus his escape from the mortal condition. But she forgot to claim eternal youth for him too, and watched her lover grow older day by day, shrivelling indefinitely without being able to die, until, out of pity, the gods changed him into a dry, grey cicada. The metamorphosis has not abolished his love, and he persists in greeting the dawn every morning.
