{"id":4190,"date":"2021-12-05T13:27:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T12:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/blog\/interference\/"},"modified":"2021-12-05T13:29:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T12:29:01","slug":"interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/blog\/interference\/","title":{"rendered":"Interference"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Richard Barrett<\/strong> – Interference <\/em>(1996-2000)
\nfor contrabass clarinet solo, voice and bass drum<\/p>\n

Carl Rosman, contrabass clarinet\/voice\/bass drum<\/p>\n

Janet Sinica, video\/editing
\nJan B\u00f6yng, editing
\nStephan Schmidt, recording producer\/editing<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Carl Rosman about Interference<\/em><\/h3>\n

Some pieces are more personal than others: for me, Interference<\/em> is very much at one end of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

The score tells me that Richard started this piece, commissioned by the ELISION Ensemble, in 1996. I no longer know precisely (this was back in the days of telephone calls, and of slowly self-erasing faxes on thermal paper) at what point Richard informed me that he had dreamt a beginning in which I sang Latin in high falsetto while accompanying myself on a pedal bass drum. But so it happened, and it has been a great pleasure to watch the reactions of many different audiences to the opening over the last twenty-plus years.<\/p>\n

Richard being Richard, he was of course interested in exploring specifics of my voice. I had no real training beyond a handful of lessons and many hours spent singing in various choirs and chamber groups, but I had done a few little experiments for myself over the years (partly spurred by hearing Julius Eastman\u2019s recording of Peter Maxwell Davies\u2019 Eight Songs for a Mad King), and Richard had heard me perform solos such as Globokar\u2019s Voix Instrumentalis\u00e9e and Richard David Hames\u2019 Zurna which combine clarinet playing with various kinds of vocal gymnastics. I knew that he had a thing about F natural and was happy to inform him that f\u2019\u2019 at the top of the treble stave was a nice safe-ish limit for my falsetto; at the other end of the range I could reach the lowest note of the contrabass clarinet as an inhaled subharmonic, a fact which Richard exploited in having the opening vocal solo end, and the following first entry of the instrument begin, on this very note.<\/p>\n

As it happened, interference gave me a modest unexpected parallel career as a vocalist: Xenakis\u2019s Kassandra was an obvious next port of call, and was followed by performances in Vienna, staged by La Fura dels Baus, of Xenakis\u2019s complete Oreste\u00efa. (Among other things, I was required to run up the steps of the Karlskirche wearing stilts.) The first of several requests to sing Eight Songs for a Mad King (an unforgettable experience, with Max himself in attendance) followed not long after\u2014all ultimately thanks to Richard\u2019s dream of interference\u2019s opening, and most appropriate given that it was Max\u2019s piece which had piqued my curiosity in the kinds of singing I brought to interference.<\/p>\n

Richard joked around the time of the premiere that there was presumably no need for an exclusivity clause in the commission contract. As it turned out, not even two years had elapsed since the first performance (in May 2000) when Dominique Cl\u00e9ment gave the Paris premiere, and the piece has not lacked for performers since (Richard Haynes, Theo Nabicht, and Lori Freedman to name a few)\u2014testimony of the power of unusual performance demands to attract adventurous performers rather than, as is usually feared, the opposite.<\/p>\n

I remember thinking early in the work\u2019s career, concerning the vocal part: I wonder if I\u2019ll still be able to do this at 40? As it turned out, my misgivings were to a certain extent justified. 40 was fine, as it turned out, but for my vocal cords at 50 the sustained high beginning is just a little too much of a strain. It\u2019s a pity, since the purely instrumental side of the piece has never been quite so enjoyable, and recent advantages in page-turning technology have certainly improved the logistical side of things\u2014and only now has there been such a good chance to make a video, as part of the wave of such things prompted by a certain pandemic. Alas, I now have to start the piece a whole-tone lower than written (with Richard\u2019s kind understanding)\u2014not the happiest chapter for me in the interference story, but part of it nonetheless. I don\u2019t know how much longer it will make sense for me to continue to perform what has probably been my signature piece for most of my professional career. But for now I can still stand by the result, and hopefully there will be a few more chances yet before I have to start the piece any lower\u2026<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Performance of Richard Barretts’s compositon for contrabass clarinet solo, voice and bass drum, with a programme note by clarinetist Carl Rosman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[106,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-programmnote","category-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4193,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions\/4193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}