for orchestra & live electronics.<\/p>\n
My piece starts with a sense of a paradisal innocence, which is broken by a baby\u2019s scream. This is the moment of incarnation, when the human spirit descends down to earth and takes on a bodily existence. To begin with language hasn\u2019t yet become articulate. It\u2019s as if the instruments are cooing and gurgling … It\u2019s a difficult task, because the physics of consonants and vowels is hugely complex. One spin-off of this research is new software that can impose these speech \u2019formants\u2019, as they\u2019re called, onto other sounds. In my new piece I\u2019ve used this software to create the sense that instruments are speaking and singing simultaneously … Most of the digital sound transformation is applied to 11 solo instruments, each of which has its own microphone. The signals are fed to a computer, which instantly sends the transformed sound into the hall through loudspeakers.
\n\u2013 Jonathan Harvey<\/p><\/blockquote>\n