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Disseminate as Five String Quartets

Phill Niblock

Disseminate as Five String Quartets has been performed in Albi, Huddersfield, Montréal, Montreuil and Saint-Maxime-du-Mont-Louis…

Originally written for orchestra, Phill NiblockDisseminate (1998) was arranged by the composer specifically for the Bozzini Quartet, or rather, for ‘multiples’ of the Quartet: twenty different tracks are mixed in each piece—twenty different instruments, the equivalent of five string quartets. The music is essentially a work on the shifting nature of overtone patterns that arise from acoustic instruments. As composer Bob Ashley convincingly argued, these pieces inscribe themselves in the “hard-core drone” scene of American electronic music:Niblock [brings] the orchestra into the electronic world.”

For Disseminate, Niblock scored a distinct set of microtonal intervals, and the players are indicated how sharp or flat they should play. But a certain sense of range is given around each chromatic pitch, so that every bow stroke partly determines the microtones. All 20 ‘instruments’ are then recorded to produce the piece. When mixed, the simultaneous microtonal intervals produced by the Bozzini Quartet(s) come together to create massive clouds of extremely rich, beating, and shifting sound. Such a complex signal needs time to unfold, and for the overtone patterns to emerge instrumentalists almost have to display the endurance of electronic instruments, producing long, seamless, sustained tones. As a listener, it is practically impossible to grasp when or how changes in the sound texture actually occur. Our sense of time is confused, and we are drawn deeper into a mode of listening that pays attention to the textural qualities of the “hard-core drone” sound itself.

Emanuelle Majeau-Bettez

Premiere

  • June 4, 2017, Suoni Per Il Popolo 2017, Suspended Music Series: Quatuor Bozzini invite Phill Niblock, La Sala Rossa, Montréal (Québec)

Disseminate as Five String Quartets

  • Composer(s): Phill Niblock
  • Year of composition: 2017
  • Duration: 22:00
  • Instrumentation: string quartet and fixed medium
Video
On disc
Concerts
4 June 2017
8:30 pm
Série QB
Niblock
In person
Montréal (Québec)
22 Nove 2018
11:00 pm
NiblockRadigue
In person
Huddersfield (England, UK)
4 Octo 2019
8:00 pm
NiblockRadigue
In person
Albi (Tarn, France)
6 Octo 2019
7:00 pm
NiblockRadigueTenney
In person
Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis, France)
28 Marc 2020
7:00 pm
Cancelled
Niblock
In person
Berlin (Germany)
9 Octo 2021
8:00 pm
BrochardGuéninNiblock
In person
Saint-Maxime-du-Mont-Louis (Québec)