Canzona per sonare: Degraded Echoes

recorder (Ganassi soprano), string quartet

Composed 2013, duration c.5’30”

Comissioned by Stroma, with funding from Creative New Zealand.

Canzona per sonare: Degraded Echoes, page 1Canzona per sonare: Degraded Echoes, page 2

Performance by Stroma, Wellington, April 2013:

Much of the music is derived from a motet by Giovanni Gabrieli: Dominus Deus Meus à 6, C127. This material is dispersed, like grains of sand carried by the wind, strewn at varying distances from their origin. For most of the piece, the instrumental parts do not share a metrical grid, but are adrift in a semi-improvised rhythmic space. The music attempts to balance its focus between the persistent harmonic traces of the motet, and a foreground made up of the grainy physical details of the instrumental sounds.

Video of the above performance: