Suspicious kind, Bruno Friedmann; electronic composition; 31:26 minutes; 2020
The idea or concept of a common music piece is mostly definite and distinct, it addresses in a narrative way one or more emotions, the recipient should become aware. A pop song might aim for love, loneliness, sadness or a situation explained by the song text. The musical style is made for that. The same with classical music: a baroque composition has to have a certain unique expressiveness, a typical timbre to express and realise its intended emotions.
The song „Je t’aime moi non plus“ made by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in 1969 is clearly dedicated to erotic experiences while „Ballo“ (also known as «Dance of the Blessed Spirits»), a part of the opera „Orpheus and Eurydice“, composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, serves more the emotion of being fallen in love and being blissfully happy.
Suspicious kind is an intensively mixed collage of these two pieces. And also a fusion of pop and classical music, using the gap between these two genres freely for composing purposes. It combines the music of an idealised striving for enchanted love (Ballo) with the one expressing lust, clearly demonstrated by joyfully moaning breaths (Je t’aime).
This music is intended to be ambient, since it is dedicated to the exhibition „OSEZ!“ (Le Séchoir, Mulhouse, 2020) which presents a panorama of the contemporary erotic art. Suspicious kind should be played in the tradition of Erik Satie with his idea of „Musique d’ameublement“ and of Brian Eno with his definition of „Ambient music“. Eno explains: «Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular, it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.“ The exhibition space and the spot of the listener change the music heard. Moving around in the room makes you aware of the facets and mixes of both pieces with their different implications.
The last 10 minutes of Suspicious kind, the mixture of the two pieces are very strong and tight, resulting first in an intense single tone which develops and uncovers the process of mixing: a melody has the rhythm of the other piece or a phrase is affected by the pitch of the other original music. The controlable technique used, the so called cross-synthesis, mixes and output sound only when the input pieces „Ballo“ and „Je t’aime“ are sounding at the same time.
The software used is mainly included in the graphical programming environment Max/MSP8 (cycling74). There are the famous algorithms of superVP (developed at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou by Norbert Schnell) and CataRT (developed at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou by Diemo Schwarz) available.
A fragment of Suspicious kind – about 11 minutes – is to hear below. It consists of the beginning part, about 2 minutes to introduce the two pieces, and is followed by the cross-synthesis part mentioned above.