Diaphane
1995

for
2-channel-tape


 
 

Diaphane (Diaphanous) for 2-track tape was composed in 1995 at the ICEM at the Folk-wang-Hochschule. The title (cf. diaphan - diaphanous) is to be understood as a concept. A stratum which is in itself complex and has been composed using various means is overlayered by several different strata or expressed as an association: a surface changes its form due to the simultaneous appearance of different-coloured lights refracted by a prism. The result is the overlapping of two different kinds of structures comparable to the interference of two pieces of film laid over each other. This happens in “Diaphane” at carefully chosen points which, temporally, are uniquely related.
This work was composed using various kinds of technology. The “concrete” sound material was won from the sounds of percussion, speech and machines and was digitally revised using various programmes. The sound structure was created with the synthesiser programme Csound.
Each individual process in the piece is different from the next in that, in some cases their sound results only appear in fragmentary form. The first rest structure can be taken as an ex-ample (2:00 to 2:30). This part, which was actually generated without a rest, was more or less cut out. i.e. only a fragment of the original structure remains. In other cases, only the initial moments of the processes form the sound strata. For example, in the final quarter of the piece is dominated by an echoing sound structure, which is repeated four times with periods of varying lengths. Further structural changes are a result of differing transpositions, which sound at the same time as the ìloopedî originals, resulting in varying running times.