Nicolaus A. Huber (*1939) with ego amplitudes
[vl,pno] 2016 Duration: 12'
World première: Toronto, November 17, 2016
Written for the Duo Wapiti (Geneviève Liboiron, Daniel Anez)
12 pages | 25 x 32 cm | 89 g | ISMN: 979-0-004-18550-6 | Saddle Stitch
Whereas Nono considered the world to be only fragmentarily analyzable, so-called consumer capitalism increasingly intrudes upon ego structures, by fragmenting them to the point of: assumed insufficiency, i.e., “was consumption a form of infiltration“?, or: “in television you can see models licking face cream because it’s so rich” etc. (retranslated), as Meredith Haaf cited in her book review (SZ / 23.05.2016 Alexandra Kleeman: “You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine”), and to the point of similar perfection-senselessness.
Music doesn’t do things by halves. Even when events or notes are “puffed up,” they can retain elegance and significance. Other ego amplitudes are of violinistic nature or are favourite memories – Paganini’s “Capricci”, Stockhausen’s “Studie I”, Steve Reich, the tone C and similar things.
The craziest egos are quantums, because at no time are they identical with themselves. They can entangle and superpose, are nonlocal, etc.
Although the sound character in this Duo is fairly open, I believe I succeeded in making probability waves of harmonic stopovers perceptible. This means hearing without analyzing and without constantly measuring. Nonlocality – without messenger particles – means no harmonic steps, but with the capacity to interact.
(Nicolaus A. Huber, May 2016)