Arioso Dolente / Beethoven Op. 110 (2002), 7m06s

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commission: Amici della Musica di Cagliari

Arioso Dolente/Beethoven op.110 is based on Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 110, and more specifically on the third movement Adagio ma non troppo. The Arioso Dolente, which includes the main melodic themes, is the epicentre of the third movement. Although I have largely maintained the harmonic structure and even the melodic profiles of the movement, the electroacoustic piece remains a comment on the original piano sonata rather than an analytical approach to Beethoven’s music. I was more interested in the spiritual aspects of this sonata. Beethoven had just rebounded from a period of illness, and his recovery sparked his creative forces resulting in the genesis of op. 110. Both the joy and the melancholy of life are merged in this movement as an omnipresent duality. While composing my musical comment on Beethoven’s Adagio I tried to enhance this duality by means of spectral transparency and luminosity, which often contrasts and converses with textural obscurity and opacity. The main melodic theme of the original Arioso Dolente appears in the middle of the piece, remote, magnified and utterly stretched in time. Arioso Dolente/Beethoven op.110 was composed at the studio of City University in London and my personal studio. The version for 5.1 surround speaker installation was created at the Electronic Studios of the Department of Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with the collaboration of Professor Georges Papanikolaou. My warmest thanks to Maria Metaxaki for the piano recordings.

Performances

Rien à voir (14)
Saturday, October 18, 2003
L’ Orchestre de granulation, Louis Dufort: PRÉrien(14)c: + Theodoros Lotis, Ryan Patterson