Musique Concrete, Guelph

 Bach, Partita in a- (1st mvt)

(Note: This soundfile not sounding clearly - while I continue to resolve this issue, here is a link to the Fibonacci Number. The spiralling and almost vertiginous perspective in this photo seems appropriate for the music of Bach, reminiscent as it is of The Golden Ratio.)

I’m not sure what it might be about me and playing my flute in stairwells, but returning to this concrete matrix of sight and sound in a residence at the south end of the University of Guelph campus was like seeking out some fountain of youth of vibration. It was a deserted, two-storey concrete bunker at the bottom of these stairs that served as an exciting echo-chamber as I puzzled for weeks on end over the intriguing intricacies of the first movement of Bach’s Partita in a- for solo flute as a student at the U of G . As with the stairwell described in that earlier post, it was a richness of acoustic that drew me like a moth to a flame.

In this case I didn’t have hours of solitude on hand, but was anxious to get back to Toronto before daylight faded after having completed a wintry road trip conducting RCM exams in Oakville, London and Kitchener-Waterloo.

So I gave myself one take, slightly under tempo for the first section of this movement, and then picking up the tempo on the repeat.  The sound of my flute was amplified magnificently, although the ensuing racket made me a little self-conscious since I hadn’t recieved clearance from the in-house donmaster. 

My powers of concentration were particularly tested halfway through the middle section with the bang of a door and distant voices echoing from far above. As much as I might love an audience, I guess I felt a little wary of having to explain myself in case anyone descended towards me ! Set up at the base of the unheated stairwell I was prepared to step aside mid-record…but no-one ever materialized. A mental exercise of shadow-boxing with an unseen and even imaginary audience!

Not the Musique Concretethat you might have been expecting, perhaps, but just try explaining that to the pumpkin that I had seen and photographed from above, smashed at the bottom of this vertical shaft days after Halloween when I was a music student in residence here…hey, concrete is concrete, and let’s just say that the acoustic here is solide!