Si! (2012) - for tenor tuba and live-electronics

Performed by Karlheinz Siessl (euphonium) and Karlheinz Essl (live-electronics) at festival Klangspuren (2012). Some years ago I received an e-mail by a tuba player named Karlheinz Siessl who found it funny that our names are so similar: they only differ in the syllable "si". He suggested a collaboration and asked me to write a piece for his instrument. Shortly thereafter I invited him into my studio where we improvised together in order to become acquainted with each other. The result was so enjoyable and promising that I agreed to compose a piece for him. Pondering over the piece, I suddenly found its title – Si! – which means "yes" in Italian and Spanish. By coincidence, this is also the solmization syllable for the note B, the fundamental tone of the tenor tuba I was using. Observing the syllable "si" from various perspectives I decided to emphasize the positive message of this word. A piece of literature came into my mind where the word "yes" is used in a highly musical way: the very end of James Joyce's novel Ulysses where Molly Bloom babbles her famous solíloquy in a daydream: and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes I asked a former student of mine to record these lines in Italian; they secretly serve as an underlying Ariadne's thread throughout the piece. By filtering the sound of the tuba with the spectrum of the female voice (employing a technique called convolution), this instrument is now able to speak in tongues. In order to obtain the desired results it was necessary to transform the sound of the bassy tuba into a range that has more common overtones with the voice. As it was nearly impossible to achieve this with normally blown tuba sounds, I had to invent new playing techniques. So I ended up „mis-using“ the tuba as an exceptional percussion instrument which is caressed and beaten. Furthermore, I also utilise it as a brass tube to breathe and whisper into it, taking advantage of its rich resonances. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/si.html