Pulsares, for one pianist, chamber orchestra and electronics

Pulsares (engl. Pulsars), for one pianist, chamber orchestra and electronics, (quadraphonic electroacoustic sounds and live-electronics), was composed between December 1998 and July 2000. The electroacoustic sounds were realized between March and June 2000 at the Studio PANaroma de Música Eletroacústica at Unesp (State University of São Paulo).

A key work in my production and a paradigmatic composition of the turn of the millennium, Pulsares was premiered on November 24, 2003, in the inaugural month of the Walt Disney Hall (in its RedCat experimental theater), in Los Angeles, with Vicki Ray (as pianist) and the New Century Players conducted by David Rosenboom, and with Mark Trayle and me for the electronics.

Pulsares is a mixed electroacoustic composition for chamber orchestra with a special participation of the piano soloist, who sits on a rotative chair in the middle of the stage playing a (normal) piano, a prepared piano and a harpsichord. Conceived as a kind of synopsis of the piano writing in the 20th century, Pulsares is a kind of “piano concert”. Considering this aspect of the work, its “concertant” character implies not merely the use of virtuosity, but above all references to the most significant features of the piano compositions in the course of the development of the contemporary music:

• Normal piano;
• systematic writing for the pedals;
• prepared piano;
• piano as resonator (when the piano is used as resonating board for other amplified instruments);
• ringmodulated piano;
• live transformed and spatialized piano;
• spectral metamorphosis of piano sounds in the pre-elaborated electroacoustic sounds (including the resonance of chords inside the piano itself without attacks);
• and finally, the diversification of the role of the pianist, who plays up to three keyboard instruments.

The whole structure of the work is based, in addition to other techniques I've invented, on my harmonic techniques, which I have developed since the 1980s: Cyclic Modules and Proportional Projections. The musical material was conceived as a tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen for his 60th birthday in 1998 and was based on a very short passage of his Klavierstück IX, which notes never appear as quotation but serve, on the contrary, as interval structure for the development of my techniques. Stockhausen was aware of my knowledge of his work and this led to his inviting me to become his Teaching Assistant at his Stockhausen Kurse in Kürten, where I taught analysis of his pieces in 1999 and 2001. When I gave him Pulsares, I explained that all the electroacoustic sounds in my work were rotating, and it's curious that in his latest electronic realization, Cosmic Pulses (2007), both the title and the fact that all the sounds are rotating curiously brings his achievement closer to mine...

Pulsares is structured in 21 sections, which can be identified in the score through sections A to U. Almost all structural aspects of the work concerning temporal developments, spatial rotations of sounds, number of sections, number of musicians, number of instruments etc. were deduced from the Fibonacci Series. Before A as well as after U the electroacoustic sounds are to be heard alone respectively with 21” and 55”. The tempo for the performance during the whole work is determined by the quadraphonic electroacoustic sounds diffused by loudspeakers around the audience.

A very detailed analysis was published by me in German: “Periodizität und Direktionalität in der Mikro- und Makrostruktur von Pulsares (1998-2000)”, in: Flo Menezes, Nova Ars Subtilior – Essays zur maximalistischen Musik, Hofheim (Germany): Wolke Verlag, 2014, pages 73-112. Its original score was edited in German, as published in this edition. From the electroacoustic sounds of Pulsares I decided to make an autonomous acousmatic octophonic version, which were realized between March and July 2000. Its title is Harmonia das Esferas (engl. Harmony of Spheres).