Multiples of 7 (amateur) voices – indeterminate duration

This is one of two works made after being invited by Michel Jaffrennou, with whom I would work closely for over a decade and a half, for an exhibition he had at the Galérie Stadler in Paris, thus my first European performances. (Ambiguïté was the other work made for this exhibition).

Here the vocalists are offered a score combining instructions and their own part, module as it were. They are to move around the space, becoming louder if they get near another vocalist and becoming more modest or introverted when on one’s own. When performed at the Gemeente Museum in the Hague a reviewer from the NRC wrote that I’d created ‘tant de bruit pour une omlette‘ across the six spaces we used. (I don’t remember that performance getting that loud.)

It sounds quite different everywhere it is performed despite to obvious presence of its basic elements.

Here follows a short excerpt from a longer recording (Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York) and the score.