Parramatta Riverside Theatres (Raffertys) 7.30pm Tuesday 21st May Armidale New England Regional Art Museum 7pm Thursday 23rd May Wollongong Illawarra Music Festival, City Art Gallery 2pm Saturday 25th May Canberra The Street Theatre 7.30pm Saturday 8th June Ensemble Offspring Artistic Directors Claire Edwardes & Damien Ricketson Program Arana Li Mysteries (2011) [world premiere] Clarinis, undachin tarhu and centaur vibraphone Philip Glass Music in Similar Motion (1969) Centaur vibraphone and (detuned) keyboard Amanda Cole Hydra I, II & III (2011) Two clarinis Damien Ricketson Some Shade of Blue (2011) Undachin tarhu (plus centaur resonance) Kraig Grady Akashic Torus (2011) Two clarinis, centaur vibraphone, meru and undachin tarhu Arvo Pärt Fratres (1977) Centaur vibraphone, meru, harmonium, undachin tarhu and violin Terumi Narushima Hidden Sidetracks (2011) Clarinis, centaur vibraphone, percussion, harmonium, and undachin tarhu 2 Instrument builders • Peter Biffin | Undachin tarhu • Kriag Grady | Centaur vibraphone, meru bars, harmonium • Linsey Pollak | Clarinis Musicians • Claire Edwardes | Percussion • Anna McMichael | Undachin tarhu • Jason Noble | Clarinis / Keyboard • Bree van Reyk | Percussion • Damien Ricketson | Violin • Diana Springford | Clarinis Undachin tarhu by Peter Biffin 3 Program notes Peter Biffin and Linsey Pollak as well as By Damien Ricketson commissioning a number of composers to write works that exploit their characteristics. Between the Keys is an Ensemble Offspring At the centre of this project is Kraig Grady, project exploring new instruments and a Californian-come-Wollongong musician new tuning systems. The project is a who traces a very direct legacy to the Partch reincarnation of our Partch’s Bastards tradition particularly via his connection project, first presented in 2011, finding to the alternative tuning theorist Erv inspiration in the music and ideas of Wilson. For this performance Grady has maverick American composer Harry Partch. shared with Ensemble Offspring a unique tuning system – centaur tuning – on which On encountering the iconic Harry Partch all instrument builders, composers and you can’t help but wonder if the history performers have based their music. He has of Western music took a wrong turn also constructed the centaur vibraphone somewhere after Bach’s Well Tempered featured in performance and composed a Clavier. Partch’s musical ideas were so new work for the event. It hasn’t been easy revolutionary that they could not be recreating music completely from scratch: performed on existing instruments and he from newly invented tuning theories to the had to design, build and perform an entire design of new instruments to play them, not orchestra of novel instruments himself. to mention the task of composing for them Although Partch died in 1974, his legacy and the challenge of learning how to play continues to grow with a young generation them. The project has involved an artistic of musicians around the world keen to team of instrument builders, composers expand his theories. Partch’s innovative and musicians working to common themes. vision and do-it-yourself ethic resonates Ensemble Offspring is very grateful strongly with Ensemble Offspring’s artistic to all those involved for their creative mission and in this project we pay tribute to contribution to an imaginative new world this luminary in our own exploration of just- of musical colour. intonation and instrument building. Between 2010-11, Ensemble Offspring Equal & Just Temperament commissioned the design of entirely unique wind and string instruments from In order to understand just-intonation and the Australian master-instrument builders its relevance to this project, it is probably 4 worth casting a critical eye over our in relation to a single fundamental tone: for ubiquitous system of equal temperament example a 3:2 interval (the interval between that most of us take for granted. the 2nd and 3rd harmonics) is equivalent to the musical interval of a perfect fifth. Harry Equal temperament is where the twelve Partch devised a just-intonation system notes of the octave are evenly distributed. A that used all the intervals found in the semitone is a semitone regardless of where harmonic series up to the 11th partial and the interval is played. The system has proven by combining these intervals in a variety useful for music that frequently modulates of ascending and descending patterns because the intervallic relationships between created a scale with 43 notes per octave. the notes are always the same regardless of Even though the scale is very microtonal, the key in which the music is performed. The the distance between each note is unequal. system is not without its problems, however. Partch’s 43-note octave formed the basis for Most crucially, the consonance (or purity) of the design of his unique ensemble equal tempered intervals are compromised of instruments. in order to force them into equal distances from one another. The interval of an equal tempered major third, for example, is quite Centaur tuning audibly larger than the major third that occurs naturally as part of the harmonic With a conventional 12-notes per octave, series: the latter being more resonant or a first glance at Kraig Grady’s centaur ‘in-tune’. Equal temperament has also been tuning may not seem a radical microtonal criticised for its harmonic blandness. By proposition, however there are several squaring-out and standardising the available facets that make the temperament tones to a limited number of intervals we distinctive. The centaur tuning is a 7-limit miss out on a rich and nuanced vocabulary of just intonation system, meaning that the harmonic possibility. scale incorporates the pure intervals of the harmonic series up to and including Just-intonation, by contrast, is any type of the 7th partial. Pitches derived from ratios tuning system where the frequencies of the incorporating 7 are noticeably at odds scale are built only out of whole number with the notes you may normally hear on a ratios (usually the lower intervals of the keyboard and as such immediately imbue harmonic series). In tuning theory, these Grady’s tuning with a striking ‘foreign’ notes are often expressed as interval ratios quality. The notes of Grady’s scale are 5 constructed by combining the intervals of New instruments 2 harmonic series based on C and F as well as a subharmonic series (a harmonic series Grady’s centaur tuning is most transparent flipped upsidedown) on A#. The variance on his centaur vibraphone, an instrument in interval sizes between the notes is that is featured in many of these works. conspicuous and colourful: where an equal The instrument is a regular vibraphone tempered system provides musicians with whose keys have been cut, filed & drilled 12 possible musical intervals to work with, to adapt the tuning to his centaur scale. In the same number of notes now provides 51 addition to the centaur vibraphone, Grady different intervallic combinations. has also provided a series of lower-pitched metal bars, called Meru bars, as well as a harmonium-like instrument whose reeds have also been adapted to play in the Diagram illustrating intervallic centaur tuning. ratios of Grady’s centaur tuning Instrument builder Linsey Pollak has a reputation for making and playing instruments made from rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms, bins, and other found objects. He has also designed more refined wind instruments and for Ensemble Offspring has crafted a set of clarinet-like instruments out of gidgee wood that he calls clarinis. In order to match the centaur tuning, the finger holes have had to be drilled in a precise and unconventional Arana Li, Mysteries spacing. As an open-holed wind instrument, the clarinis face many limitations. Without As with many of my works, Mysteries a key mechanism, the size of the instrument shows a preoccupation with the Chinese has had to be restricted, providing only a Ménglóng Shi Rén poets, specifically the limited range as well as a limited selection work of Bei Dao. Much of my work has of notes. In fact it is not possible to play all sought to capture similar quality of fertile 12 of Grady’s centaur pitches on a single ambiguity. Although not written for voice, instrument, hence 4 different clarini have I still vocalise fragments of Dao’s text as been made, each of a different subset mode a means of generating melodic contour that only collectively can play all of the and phrasing. A rhythmically free work centaur notes. structured in four sections, Mysteries plays out as a multilayered dialogue oscillating Peter Biffin is one of Australia’s leading between instruments (the earthy sound of makers of string instruments. Of particular the clarinis against the airy sound of the note are his tarhu, a family of spike-fiddles, tarhu) and between two competing modes an instrument similar to kamancheh found found within Grady’s colourful intonation. (AL) throughout the middle east and central Asia. The tarhus are characterised by a unique acoustic system where the vibrations Philip Glass, Music in Similar Motion of the strings are transferred into a wooden cone within the body of the instrument. Music in Similar Motion is one of Philip The design provides the instruments with Glass’ early minimalist works. Written in a responsive dynamic range as well as a 1969 for the Philip Glass Ensemble, these sensitive variety of colour. Until now, all of early works tend to be far more austere Biffin’s designs have been for instruments than the expressive language he is noted that are held on or between the knees for today. The title Music in Similar Motion (gamba style) and this, the undachin tarhu describes exactly what happens in the piece: is the first of his instruments to be held musical lines always move in the same in a violin-like fashion. In addition to the melodic direction although not always unique method of tone-production, the in parallel intervals.