L’ivresse de la Vitesse (Intoxication by Speed), remains one of my most popular works. The score with the program notes can be viewed online here:
electrocd.com/en/partition/8051/Paul_Dolden/L_ivresse_de_la_vitesse/Listening_Transcription
This score is perhaps the easiest of my multi-track works to read because most of the work is in our current tuning system; therefore, one actually sees music staves with written notes! For my other microtonal works, I develop a symbolic notation that appears often like some form of graphic art. While I feel that the score is more accessible than others, remember: you are still reviewing some pages with 400 staves, and often with 40 different tempos at the same time.
It was important for me to write out the score for many reasons. First, to control the melodic and harmonic synchronization, with 40 tempos I needed to measure where in time the different tempos or velocities lined up. Therefore, if a bar of tempo 100 equaled one inch a bar, tempo 110 equaled .9 inches. Separate clicks were given to the performer for each tempo line to make a polyrhythm of 11 against 10 performed accurately.
Artistically it was also important that I write my music first, because I often felt a lot of electroacoustic music was the composer having a love affair with his/her favorite sounds. By composing in silence I keep the music moving forward and do not get bogged down in sound worship.
I have two strong memories of when I wrote and produced this work. First, I was tired of the introversion of most contemporary music, including my own, during the 1980s. Without writing Broadway show-tunes I created an extroverted, exciting, fast-moving work that strives to be constantly shifting. At the beginning of the score, my notes discuss how I maintained compositional identity through use of particular polyrhythms, tetra chords and simple melodic lines based on the 4th and 5th.
My second strong memory of this work, and all the works I wrote between 1980 and 2000, is how fast I wrote the scores. I wrote this score in about 3 months. My writing-hand moved constantly as I moved forward through musical time. I would write constantly for ten hours a day, stuffing food into my mouth as I went. Now I spend far more time exploring the other end of the pencil, the eraser. The recording, editing and mixing process for these works has not changed. For a 15-minute work like this, you are looking at a year or 18 months of working away in the coal mine of the recording studio. In this case we are putting the coal back into the ground, piece by piece.
I created the 2012 re-master because my audio technique had gotten better, the gear had improved and I understood the work better. Mixing 400 tracks takes a long time to just learn the fader layout of the instruments, and what sections or instruments need what kind of EQ or compression. The artistic interpretation that occurs in mixing matures with time, age, and understanding. Enjoy.
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.
released July 10, 2020