| Material |

In this work I use two kinds of bare minimum material: sustained instrumental pitches and vocalizations directed through the instruments.


| Generators and Resonators |

The former pertains to the four saxophones as generators of sound: the airstream turns into instrumental material. The latter pertains to the four saxophones as resonators of sound: the instruments turn into vehicles that amplify, modulate, and repurpose the vocalizations of the performers.


| The Strife |

Each saxophone might function as a generator and resonator at the same time. The result of this interaction is a strife.


|| ΔΥΟ ||

The strife is the result of simultaneously applying two streams of material to the same instrument, but also the result of splitting the function of the two tubes of the same instrument and having them oscillate independently of each other. In other words, there are two kinds of dyads: i) a generated pitch and a resonating vocalization that interferes with the former; ii) two generated pitches, that is, some extremely soft dyads that result from the simultaneous (but independent) vibration of the upper and lower tube.


| Beating |

Both kinds of dyads let a strong beating effect emerge. Beating is the sonic manifestation of the strife.


| Emerging Materiality |

If sound material may be the result of a strife and not something that exists in itself, then materiality cannot be fixed, represented, and a priori determined but, rather, emerges as an event that remains uncontrollable by the performer, not fully notable by the composer, constantly moving, and happening each time anew. The material no longer is; rather, it emerges; it happens. The material is the becoming of material.


| (Re)-Presentation |

Sound is no longer the re-presentation of material but, rather, the presentation of a happening. The sound material presents itself anew the moment it happens and becomes material.


| De-Humanization |

Letting sound emerge gives prominence to a dehumanized standpoint: the listeners capture the emergence of sound, but sound no longer exists for them. Sound becomes sound when it does not exist for the listeners.


| The Performer |

The performers’ task is to actively make sound, not to play the sounds. Making sound means to create the conditions within which sound becomes sound and does not exist for the listeners.


| Structural Scaffolding |

The structure of the work develops as a constant succession of two contrasting streams of material: passages of movement and moments of stasis.


| Determinate Negation |

What seems to be static (that which in notational representation appears to sustain) has, in fact, manifested itself as constantly moving. In other words, the moments of stasis are already passages of movement. The determinate negation of stasis demonstrates that movement is the underlying structure that permeates all streams of materials.


| Form |

It is determinate negation at work that reveals something more than the structural scaffolding of the work, that is, more than the sum of its parts. What is more? The form, which is movement itself at the bottom of all materials. This discovery points out a dialectical form that has been under way.


| Withdrawal |

Form un-conceals that which the instruments conceal: the movement of sound; the drama (action) of sound; sound as sound that is self-presented. Just as one is able to see an object because of and through light but cannot see light itself unless the object withdraws from visibility, likewise the listener may have the instruments withdrawn from audibility and hear the action of sound. This is the ultimate goal of the work.


| The Human Body |

That which remains when the instruments withdraw from audibility is the human body or, more precisely, the human voice, which is for audibility what light is for visibility. The embodiment of materiality and the emphasis on the physicality of the instruments, which turn into resonators of the voice and, thus, shed new light to the embodied materials reveal the human body as the underlying source of sound, as the condition for the possibility of sound.


| Lived Space |

The manifestation of the body as sound and sound as body points out a new form of lived sound-space.