Richard Teitelbaum (1939-2020)

Dal Niente (1997)

for MIDI piano, sampler and computer

electronic work

  • General information
    • Composition date: 1997
      Revision dates: 1997 , 1997
    • Duration: 22 mn 7 s
    • Dedication: «to the memory of Aki Takahashi’s husband, the noted music critic Kuniharau Akiyama, and to some of the American experimental composers—Cowell, Cage, Feldman, Nancarrow and Tudor—whose music he loved, and did so much to make known in Japan»
Detailed formation
  • soloist: electronic/MIDI keyboard/synthesizer

Premiere information

  • Date: 1997
    Location:

    Japon, Yokohama et Takefu


    Performers:

    Aki Takahashi, piano.

  • Date: 1998
    Location:

    États-Unis, New York, Merkin Hall


    Performers:

    Aki Takahashi, piano ; Richard Teitelbaum, électronique.

  • Date: October 2000
    Location:

    États-Unis, Irvine (CA), Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College and Eclectic Orange Festival, Orange County Philharmonic Society


    Performers:

    Aki Takahashi ; Ursula Oppens.

Information on the electronics
Electronic device: autre dispositif électronique, échantillonneur - sampler

Observations

« …dal niente… is dedicated to the memory of Aki Takahashi’s husband, the noted music critic Kuniharau Akiyama, and to some of the American experimental composers — Cowell, Cage, Feldman, Nancarrow and Tudor — whose music he loved, and did so much to make known in Japan. Most of those who founded this tradition no longer walk among us, but the beauty of their ideas and creations continues to inspire. In an “homage” to them, I have sought to adopt some of their attitudes and concepts: from Henry Cowell, an awareness of new sounds and harmonic structures, and the invention of unusual methods of obtaining them; from Cage, an openness to whatever eventuality the chance nature of the universe brings to us; from Feldman, an intense awareness of the sheer beauty of sound; from Nancarrow, the use of machines to create musical patterns and structures beyond the humanly playable, and pleasure in their wild exuberance; and from Tudor, the inspiration to invent new instrumental systems and to consider such a configuration itself to be the score of the music. In my piece, I have employed today’s digital electronics to realize or elaborate these ideas in ways that only such technology makes possible: a real-time iterative computer system “listens” to the material played by the pianist on a specially adopted MIDI piano, and responds instantaneously with transformations of what it hears, as well as additional utterances of its own »
(livret du disque Richard Teitelbaum Piano Plus – Piano Music 1963-1998, New World Records, n. 80756-2; https://nwr-site-liner-notes.s3.amazonaws.com/80756.pdf)