Karolina Öhman, Violoncello
Ellen Fallowfield, Violoncello
Lisa Hofer, Violoncello
Cédric Spindler, Elektronik

Konzertaufnahme: 27. Mai 2023, Toni Areal, Grosser Saal, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste ZHdK (IGNM Zürich)
Musikregie / Tonmeister: Lars Dölle (SRF)

The piece is dedicated to the famous Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) for two reasons. Firstly, part of his work indirectly allows much of what today is done in processing sound with computers. Secondly, I felt that some moments of his rather bizarre biography closely approached events of my own life. In the piece three celli are tuned in fifths as usual, but at approximately 35 cents difference from each other, equating harmonic 11 from the 3rd string of the first cello with harmonic 5 from the 1st string of the second cello and then repeating the process between cellos two and three. This tuning generates an interesting constellation that allows the easy production of very high harmonic relationships in a relatively low register. This space is then navigated in a movement that oscillates between low and high harmonic ratios, bringing the latter to mingle with noise. The computer is used to extend and partially transform this process. Under a seemingly episodic formal surface the piece grows nevertheless out of a restricted material that is submitted to various simultaneous transformation principles of a logarithmic nature. Sections in the piece are particular moments of such transformation. The piece was commissioned by the Europäischer Musik Monat for the Echzeit! Festival and was premiered in Basel in November 2001.
Erik Oña