Afatsim

Afatsim (Hebrew) are galls. Webster’s dictionary defines galls as a swelling or excrescence of the tissues of a plant that results from the attack of parasites, often distinguished by a characteristic shape of color. For example, alpogall is a hard brittle spherical body that is about the size of a hickory nut and is produced on the twigs of an oak by a gall wasp.

Searching for an alternative to a linear dramatic temporal experience, this piece suggested a way in which time might be disfigured like an infestation of galls on the surface continuity of a branch. The nonet is subdivided into four composite instruments: viola and bass flute, violin and oboe, cello and clarinet, and piano, double bass and percussion. In each section of the piece, the interrelationships of this “quartet” changes. There might be four disparate polyphonic voices of this composite quartet, or the entire ensemble might magnify a single line of the flute, when in fact, this line had originally been conceived as only a single voice of pre-composed viola/flute material. Consequently, the perspective on the material and the ensemble zooms in and out as if the “lens” of the listener was in constant flux. Furthermore, coherent, well characterized (even eccentric), extremely gestured and physical musical behaviours are fragmented or torn off into “sentences,” “half sentences,” “words,” and “half words.” These then are recombined to create new “utterances.” This disfigurement subverts the ability for linear prediction, but does not altogether discard a resynthesized “strange” and implicit narrative continuity, on which like the branch, the disfigurement is grafted. The piece is dedicated to the Ensemble Recherché. – Chaya Czernowin & Steven Kazuo Takasugi