aftertouch
String quartet, MPE Keyboard [30′]
aftertouch is a work for string quartet and MPE keyboard in four movements. Each movement is built around samples of a different old piano.
Rather than a conventional piano, the keyboard part of this piano quintet employs an MPE controller (such as a Roli, Osmose, or Continuum) connected to a sampler that plays four differently recorded old or archival recordings of pianos.
The first movement, “Ligoneri”, uses samples from an old piano at the A.K.S.S. school on the Greek island of Spetses, where Iannis Xenakis studied in the 1930s. The second movement, “Giardini”, re-samples the Yamaha Disklavier piano used in my 2010 Venice Biennale work Politicus, transposed two octaves lower so that the sound seems to emerge from underwater. The third movement draws on isolated moments from Maro Ajemian’s 1950 recording of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes. The fourth movement re-samples the piano Louis Andriessen used for composition in his house on the Keizersgracht, now housed at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
The piano samples, played on the MPE keyboard, exploit the instrument’s distinctive capabilities: each note can be independently shaped through continuous control of pressure (aftertouch) and movement along both the X and Y axes. Through these multidimensional gestures, the old pianos are reanimated, touched again and given a new expressive life.
