Javier Alejandro Garavaglia

Am Steg (Spaces) for stereo tape (1992-96)

Genre: Acousmatic Music

Duration: 8:57

This was my first electroacoustic piece. Its main sound materials are three notes (C, B and D) played "sul ponticiello" (in German "am Steg") on the viola. The richness in harmonics of this complex led me to a composition that resembles a study on spectra, consisting mainly on transpositions and reverberating of the main sounds. The first version was finished in 1992, as I already began another project involving also viola sounds ("pizz", based only on one "pizzicato" on the C string of the viola).

The original title of the piece in 1992 was "Räume", (German for "Spaces"). In the beginning of 1996, I returned to it – still unperformed up to that time- and I decided to make some radical changes, leaving only the frame of the work, but adding more: i.e. filter chains improving the spectral quality of the sound, very low and very high FM and FM filtered sounds by following the amplitude envelope of the original sound, etc.

The sense of space of the first version was not lost in the revision of 1996 (which is considered by the author the definite version). Even if the title changed, it still (like on the original) mentions the source of the basic sound materials.