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Auteur/artiestJonathan Impett, Marco Fusi
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Publicatiejaar2019
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Datum21 nov 2019
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ClusterMusic, Thought and Technology
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FormatConcert opname
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Prijsgratis
Presence and Resonance
Apollo e Marsia (Apollo) (viola d’amore, long tubes and computer) sets out from Tintoretto’s image of Ovid’s story, depicting a viola da braccio with sympathetic strings and a long flute. Tintoretto represents the moment after the contest, before Midas’ judgement. Each player (here Apollo) remembers the duel differently. Even such immediate memory is nonlinear – still moreso our cultural memory. The violist’s memory of the other (through resonant tubes) provides a context for the fragmentation of his self-memory of traces of an unrecoverable song – a hymn to Apollo from Delphi (c. 138 BC), preserved only in an inscription in stone.
MTT at Concertgebouw Brugge 2019
Ovid recounts the contest between Apollo and the satyr Marsyas, who has challenged the god to a contest of musical skill. Tintoretto depicts the moment when their playing has just ended. They wait while Midas deliberates, each doubtless remembering the events differently. We don’t yet know the gruesome end to which Marsyas will be subjected. Apollo will be victorious, of course; at a certain point he inverts his instrument but keeps performing, a challenge that Marsyas is unable to respond to. In Tintoretto’s image, Apollo is shown playing a viola with a sympathetic string clearly visible; Marsyas plays a double pipe. This first of a pair of pieces addresses the fragmenting nonlinearity of Apollo’s memory – moments of clarity, others of obsession or loss - resonating in the threat of Marsyas’ presence and the enduring sound of the pipes. Our own memory has a parallel challenge in reconstructing the hymns chiselled into stones at Delphi following competitions some 2100 years ago, from which all the present musical material is taken.
