Composition diary for “Anthropocene” #4

I finished the piece about 3 weeks ago now, and had to put it away for a little while to reflect more on it. As I was putting the finishing touches on the piece, a more direct conceptual idea of how to describe the piece arose, and is written in its program notes at the beginning of the notation.
When finishing to edit the piece, the main difference was to condense some of the material, and make it clearer what the music should be. The only large editing that happened is removing the battuto section which was previously mentioned. This changed a bit the proportions of the piece, which I then had to change the end a bit, but it works much better musically. I feel that now, the proportions of the piece are nice and “even”, not in the sense of seconds per section, but its dramaturgy.
I now also have the electronics for the piece thought out and done AFTER having written everything. This was a quite different experience for me. The electronics are now much looser than what I would normally do, but it does however also fit the concept of the composition. Is it a 100% correlation to me having done the electronics after the fact? I don’t think so, but it definitely does have an influence. Both musicians with have NGIMU sensors on their bowing wrist. The sensor data as well as audio descriptors will analyse the sound and at certain conditions sound files of natural sounds (mainly glaciers crashing) will be played. The sounds should not melt into the acoustic sound either, but they should disrupt it completely. There is also some granular synthesis going on here and there, but once again always in a way to disrupt the natural flow of acoustic contemporary music. It’s a bit of a clash between genres in a way as well.
I also showed the piece to my mentor through the composer’s guild in Norway and it still needs a bit of editing mainly in notation. But after having it on the side for a few weeks, there’s also a few things I will have to change before I can call the piece “finished”. Mainly a few rhythmical things that could be more interesting, some changes in dynamics and notation of techniques.
The piece will be part of a reading session at Mixtur festival next month in Barcelona.