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Gravity's Stillness. 1996 (Remastered 2012) For Violin and tape

by Paul Dolden

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Gravity’s Stillness. 1996 (Remastered 2012).

For Violin, or Viola and tape.

Commissioned by Rivka Golani. Performed in this recording by Julie-Anne Derome.

During the 1980s, with my crumbling Walls of Jericho and Intoxication of speed, I was perceived as an enfant terrible. Starting in the early 90s, like many of my generation I started having problems with modern music and in its abstract, non-melodic and a-rhythmic sound. Finding my way back to what most people would consider being “musical” was a ten-year struggle and I concluded that it is harder to write a memorable melody that it is to create another anonymous texture.

Like all my works for soloist and tape, the ghost of the virtuoso soloist looms large. Beyond my eternal love for romantic and post romantic music, I suspect growing up as a lead guitarist both in rock and jazz had fixed in my mind’s ear the role of a soloist in a musical work. Not to mention the sheer physical joy of moving your fingers fast and producing lots of notes!

I use the tape part to place the soloist in different sounding musical worlds. However all these worlds are part of the same musical galaxy as they are created using the same melodic and harmonic ideas.

During this ten-year period I abandoned micro-tonality as another “musical bad habit”. I wanted to see again what could be done in our horrible tuning system that very few are willing to abandon. I created my own smudging ceremony for our music system by using lots of different metal pieces that I re-tuned to our ugly 12 steps. This new orchestration helped bend my ear enough, and I felt I was doing something fresh with our 12 notes. It also allowed for easy interface with live musicians who only spoke in those 12 steps.

he work is included in the “Golden Dolden Box Set” available under the “merchandise” tab. This box set includes all my music, scores , essays, and educational talks from 1984 to 2021.

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released March 21, 2021

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Paul Dolden Val Morin, Québec

For 40 years I have been mixing hundreds of recorded musical parts , with each track being recorded one at a time. I write the score before I go in my studio. Works are solo studio compositions or commissions for live soloist(s) and tape. I develop my own tuning systems and use multiple tempos at the same time. The first 20 years I produced dissonant dense textures. Since 2000 more melodic. ... more

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