| Derek Hurst • Bacchanalia Skiapodorum (2004) |
| for alto sax and electronic sound |
| Bacchanalia Skiapodorum was written in an attempt to highlight the qualities and traits of the alto saxophone and the technical prowess its finest performers. The electronic component is written to provide a mutable cohort to the live-instrument by weaving through musical texture between episodes of implied instrumental extension and slithery contrapuntal frenzy in a manner worthy of the anthropoidal megamonopod. The electronic component was realized using samples and digital synthesis in Csound (with modifications made to Horner’s wind instrument algorithm) which were further treated and assembled in Protools. Skiapodes (shodowfooted man: a.k.a. Antipodes / Sciapods / Monocoli)) are first referred to by Herodotus as creatures with one leg at whose end appeared an even greater (webbed) foot. These supposed desert-dwelling “men” used this great foot to shade themselves from the intense heat of the desert sun by lying on their back and positioning the foot so as to block the intense rays of the sun from the rest of their body. Legends of the fantastic men spread and were further corrupted in different travel accounts. Tales of their existence (as well as innumerable other fanciful creatures) enjoyed a revival in medieval writings by learned men, historians, priests and travelers (i.e. John de Mandville and Isidore of Seville among others). In these accounts the supernatural beings went from creatures possessing an uncanny ability to shade themselves to “monsters” of distant lands whose single enormous leg and foot engendered them with surprising agility and the ability to travel at great speeds on both land and water. (Amending the myth, I suppose, would assuage some of the questions that were likely to be raised by some of the more astute laity when it came to questions of the Sciapod’s purported longevity or unlikely existence at all in a pre-Darwinian world.) Lacking the fluid motion afforded by bipedal (or especially quadrupedal) locomotion, this seemingly uncompromised great speed and agility was, no less, accompanied by jagged and bouncy motion. |
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