Lim (2024)
for fl, ob, cl, vn, vla, vcDuration: c.a. 7'
Premiere: 1. 6. 2024, DOX+, Klangforum Wien
The name Lim relates to limits - it explores limits in pitch, time and perception. It ends at the pulse q=20, roughly around the slowest pulse we can distinguish as humans.
This was quite an exciting piece to write. However, the piece realised one of the horrors a composer could experience - when an original idea doesn't work as planned. I am grateful for an opportunity I was given in the year 2024 - to write a piece to be played by Klangforum Wien and be played as part of reading lessons - a session where they read through our pieces and provide feedback. I had an original idea of having 1D, 2D, 3D (and possibly 4D) spaces of chords and to be moving between them. I remember I spent several weeks working on code that could make this tool work. After everything was done and I started working on the piece, I realised I didn't quite like the results and I didn't find the transitions convincing - the reason is quite simple - imagine organising chords as points on a 1D axis depending on how spectrally similar they are to chord A (on the left) or chord B (on the right). Once you place all the chords on one line and play the chords after each other, there isn't really any connection between them, because they are related to the chords A and B and not between each other.
After realising this, I had to change my plans as soon as possible and decided to write a piece that takes the listener through an imaginary tunnel, as if travelling through space - and once zooming more and more in, different musical worlds emerge. I used this opportunity to also test out several ideas in terms of relating pitches based on their partials and extended some ideas to microtones towards the end of the piece.
Reading lessons of Lim at the Prague Spring festival