Earwitness (familiar 2)

for string quartet and stereo soundtracks
[2017] dur. 15′ ca.

Earwitness (familiar 2) is a piece for string quartet and stereo soundtracks consisting of field recordings and a bourdon-like soundtrack. Earwitness is a collection of fifty portraits, short paradigms of human behaviors, written by E. Canetti in 1974. The title of the piece relates to one of them.

«The earwitness makes no effort to look, but he hears all the better. He (..) hears whatever is to be heard, and moves away untouched and absent». I was particularly struck by this idea of an ear able to register everything around and unable to forget. The subtitle “familiar” relates to the nature of sounds I have chosen to use in the field recordings: me listening around, familiar routes, voices, soundscapes. The instruments build their own relations of sounds and harmonies, suspended and at the same time vibrant and persistent. The string quartet shares with the soundtracks a path, it lets the recordings emerge and it continues without interfering, with no conflict.

Written for Quartetto Maurice with the support of the Fonds Podium Kunsten Nederland