Luminal Mirage (2024)

For Ensemble & Electronics

Commissioned and composed for Ensemble Phace

Beams of light, sudden flash lights, strobe effects, coloured outbursts and then again, sudden darkness. That is the typical optical experience of anyone attending an electronic music event at a festival or in a night club. Light seems to play a double function in the space of th club. On one hand, the light, in sync with the music, highlights the transcendent character of the experience, underlining drops and climaxes of the tracks. On the other hand it should be rare (but nonetheless intense), since the club is the place of the unseen, where the senses (at least the sight) are downsize. Light as an anaesthetic or light as an intoxicant? But can light convey emotions? And can music itself replace light or try to depict its unusual nature?

Luminal Mirage tries to investigate this possibility, taking optical phenomena for inspiration and transferring them to an immersive sound experience. 

Premiere performance:

5.10.2024

Musikprotokoll 2024

Ensemble Phace, Lars Mlekusch

Helmut List Halle, Graz

Instrumentarium:

Flute (also bass flute & piccolo)
Clarinet in B (also bass clarinet)
Alto Saxophone (also baritone sax)

Piano (for preparation: VHS-Tape, Patafix)
Keyboard (88 notes, played by the pianist)

E-Bass (with Live effects, Bottle neck – E-bow)
Pedals: Distorsion, Octaver (2 octaves up and down), Reverb, Flanger, Delay

Percussion (1 Player):
Vibraphone, 6 Thai Gongs (060, 045, 020, 018), 1 Waterphone
4 Drums (1 Tom Set, 4″, 6″, 8″, 10″), 6 Temple Blocks, 1 Floor-Tom
1 Concert Gran Cassa (36″)

Violin
Cello
Double Bass

Electronics & Sound Design

Duration: 13 min.

Download Manuscript Score here

This work was supported by Stadt Wien, SKE Austro Mechana and Musikprotokoll