Harp is a Chord

Written for Goska Isphording and Maciej Frackiewicz, commissioned by the Musical Aspirations Foundation (PL), co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland with the support of the Lithuanian Composers' Union. The piece won the prize for the best 2016 chamber piece at the competition held by the Lithuanian Composers Union.

Programme note

In this piece two instruments of a very different or even opposite origin and acoustic nature are melted into a monolithic “monochrome” mechanism, as if constructing a utopian instrument with characteristics of the harpsichord and accordion. The idea of such composition came from a play on words, only changing a sequence of letters in an English name of the harpsichord: harpSIchord – harpISchord. “Harp” is being read as an arpeggio (e.g. a technique asking to play chord notes in succession upwards or downwards), while “chord” is perceived as a synchronous entrance of all the chord sounds together. In this piece the two indivisible phases of sound – sound attack and resonance – are being separated in a sense of timbre. The first one is obviously assigned to the harpsichord, which naturally has almost no resonance, and the second one clearly belongs to the accordion, dynamically raising sounds from the silence. By the way, the principle of duality/opposites is expressed also through a special use of double keyboards which both instruments have whilst the diatonic white-keys harmony comes from the “eolian (wind) harp” sound.

Performances

11 October 2016, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (NL) | 23 October 2016, GAIDA festival, Vilnius (LT) 

Duration: 10'