[Studio PANaroma at Unesp (Brazil)] New piece

[Flo Menezes]

Dear Friends,
After the XV BIMESP 2024 (International Biennial for Electroacoustic Music of Sao Paulo), in which we celebrated 30 years of Studio PANaroma and gave 17 concerts with 90 works, I composed a new acousmatic composition in 8 days: “Aotakark”, for 16 channels.

A binaural version can be found on my YouTube channel and I'm sending it to anyone interested, followed by the text below about the work.
Greetings from
Flo Menezes

https://youtu.be/JDnOODu_uhE
Flo Menezes – "Aotakark" (2024), acousmatic piece
youtu.be


About Aotakark
Reading Murray Schafer’s curious book The Tuning of the World, I came across the following passage:
“The loudest sound heard on Earth that we can remember was the explosion of the caldera [volcano eruption] of Krakatoa in Indonesia, between August 26 and 27, 1883. The sounds were heard on the island of Rodríguez, which is approximately 4,500 kilometers away and where the local police chief reported: ‘Several times during the night, [...] explosions were heard coming from the east, distant roars of heavy cannons. These explosions continued at intervals of about three to four hours, until 3pm on the 27th’. On no other occasion could the sounds be perceived at such a distance, and the area in which the sounds were heard on August 27 amounted to just under 1/13 of the entire surface of the globe.” (R. Murray Schafer, A afinação do mundo, São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2011, p. 51.)
At the time he wrote the book (1977), this sound event on this Indonesian island was a unique milestone, having reached a force equivalent to 200 megatons and having reached 172 decibels, well above the maximum limit of bearability of the ear, at 130 dB. The tragic eruption threw debris 100 km away and killed around 36,000 people. Later, very close to the present day, in January 2022, another eruption, this time of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on the island of Tonga, surpassed the Krakatoa event and its sounds could be heard up to 9,600 km away.
Regardless of the recent phenomenon, I was very interested in the reference to the Krakatoa eruption in Schafer’s book, itself a landmark in the sociological evaluation of sounds, because the author will then go on to criticize, very pertinently, the overpowering of loud sounds in the modern industrial age, for which sound intensity is commonly associated with power. By naming the natural phenomenon of immense sound power, Schafer ends up introducing the predominant role of high-intensity sounds as symbols of modern capitalism.
So, I decided to make use of the stark contrast between high-powered, very short-lived sonic blows and their very diverse and spatially varied reverberations, extending the catastrophic events in a detailed dive into the filigrees of sonorities, sometimes of quite subtle intensity. I thus inverted the event, trying to pay more attention to the resonances than to the booms from which they emanate. Hence the inversion of the island's name, giving rise to the title of the piece: Aotakark.
Just as in Perpetui decoris structura, I used granular synthesis above all, shattering the sound over 16 channels, and also in record time: that piece was made in 3 days at the EMS (Elektronmusikstudion) in Stockholm, in 2022; this one, between October 21 and 28, 2024, so in just 1 week of deep concentration, inaugurating the Studio in my new home, the future headquarters of a Foundation whose purpose will be to study my work...
Jandira (SP), on October 24, 2024
Flo Menezes

Flo Menezes
Compositor, Professor Titular da Unesp e
Diretor Artístico do
Studio PANaroma de Música Eletroacústica
Celular: ++55/11/98282-0960
Studio PANaroma: ++55/11/3393-8697
email: flo em flomenezes.mus.br <mailto:flo em flomenezes.mus.br>
website: http://flomenezes.mus.br <http://flomenezes.mus.br/>
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