Nemo Dynamo - Per Nørgård

Post-Fulbright Recital - University of Michigan School of Music Theatre & Dance, February 10, 2010

Nemo Dynamo
I have sometimes run into the mechanical or machine-like element in my music - though in somewhat different forms. In my clarinet trio, Spell, there is a section I have marked 'slightly mechanical', where something that has been sort of dancing and swinging a bit becomes almost clockwork, and the various rhythms that have existed now fall on the beat, and the whole thing becomes rather like ice-crystals. This is a sort of mechanism that reveals itself as a kind of crystal in contrast to the life that surrounds us, amoebic or vertebrate, whereas mechanical music is much more akin to a machine - as expressed in Nemo Dynamo, written for computer and percussion. And this is the real challenge to us humans, that computers, robots, can in fact achieve far more than we can today in terms of physical performance, and I have used this as a kind of image of the fact that this computer produces sampled percussion sounds, and does so with incredible tempo and precision, of course, whilst the soloist is able to kind of skate or surf over these sounds, because of course he knows what is happening and can build up series on his instruments, in the sense that he can catch a theme that comes rushing out of the computer, he can draw this theme out, and slow it down or accelerate it as he wishes. In other words, he can play with it, just as Captain Nemo could play and sail around and steer his submarine.
(Nørgård)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Per
• Norgard
• Norgaard
• Nørgård
• multiple
• percussion