line-up: aquanaut, 2 flutes, oboe, clarinet, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, percussion, e-guitar, keyboard, 2 violins, viola, violoncello, contrabass
duration: 12′
date of premiere: 15.8.2025, Black Page Orchestra, conductor Irene Delgado Jimenez, OCT.OPUS25 Karlsplatz Wien
line-up: soprano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion, piano/keyboard, e-guitar, accordion, 2 violine, viola, violoncello, contrabass, electronic and video
duration: 18′
date of premiere: 8.5.2025, Black Page Orchestra, conductor Marino Formenti, Musikverein Wien
The piece consists of free associations and incomplete experimental setups exploring the relationship between image and sound. In three chapters focusing on space, figure, and action, static images are painted over, locations are shifted and reinterpreted, movements are underscored and expectations provoked, emotional states are inscribed into pairs of eyes, and visual as well as sonic cross-references are continually generated.
The whole work is framed by two songs that reference, in particular, the collaborations between Ennio Morricone and Pier Paolo Pasolini — first in the opening credits, which musically introduce the members of the ensemble one by one (as in Pasolini’s film Uccellacci e uccellini, where Ennio Morricone has the opening credits sung as an offbeat pop tune), and later in the end credits, where I set to music one of Pasolini’s late poems about music, l’orecchiabile (“the catchy tune”).
Das Stück sind freie Assoziationen und unvollständige Versuchsanordnungen zur Beziehung von Bild- und Tonebene. In 3 Kapiteln zu den Aspekten von Raum, Figur und Handlung werden statische Bilder übermalt, Orte versetzt und umgedeutet, Bewegungen untermalt und Erwartungen provoziert, seelische Zustände in Augenpaare eingeschrieben und immer wieder visuelle wie klangliche Querverweise erzeugt.
Das ganze wird umrahmt von zwei Songs, die insbesondere auf die Zusammenarbeiten von Ennio Morricone mit Pier Paolo Pasolini Bezug nehmen – einerseits im Vorspann, der die Mitglieder im Orchester der Reihe nach musikalisch vorstellt (wie in Pasolinis Film “Uccellacci uccellini”, wo Enno Morricone die Credits im Vorspann als schrägen Schlager vorsingen lässt), und andererseits im Abspann, wo ich ein spätes Gedicht Pasolinis über Musik, l’orecchiabile (der Ohrwurm), vertone.
line-up: flute, soprano/tenor saxophone, e-guitar, piano, percussion, 4-channel-electronics
duration: 11 minutes
date of premiere: 01.07.2021, BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milano
The piece starts in the present and finishes in a not so distant future. All forces of human mankind are united, even the most athletic ones on the planet, for the final combat against enslavement by machines. Will humanity be able to tame the algorithm before it eats the world? You won’t believe what happens next!
https://theblackpageorchestra.bandcamp.com/track/combative-music-and-its-algorythmic-demystification
line-up: grand piano, 2 keyboards
duration: 20 minutes
date of premiere: 18.05.2022 BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA, Musikverein Wien
exists also in an alternative version for grand piano and 1 keyboard
The piece treats each key of the piano in an informative, disinformative, narrative, musical or non-musical way, starting in order from the lowest to the highest note.
The individual octaves form 7 chapters. During the composition, the listener learns, among other things, to distinguish the rustling of wind in different types of trees, how the physical condition of guinea pigs can be changed by 8-hour exposure to a 116 hertz frequency, how the 2mm insect Lesser Waterboatman achieves a sound of 96 dB with its penis, at which cytological position in the genome of the fruit fly one can adjust the pitch of its mating call, or how often the “a” occurs in all 32 Beethoven sonatas.
No animals were harmed for the piece, except for one.
line-up: flute, oboe, horn, trombone, e-guitar, accordion, percussion, 2 keyboards, violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass
duration: 21′
date of premiere: 18.11.2020, Klangforum Wien, Wiener Konzerthaus
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
line-up: flutes, clarinets, accordion
duration: 6’30”
date of premiere: 04.11.2014 ÖNM Ensemble, Spittal / Drau
recording:
19.2.2018, IZZM Klagenfurt, Ensemble Musikfabrik Süd (Ensemble Neuraum)
line-up: (digital) flute, (digital) viola, electronics (version 1.2 with flute, violin and electronics)
duration: 13 minutes
date of premiere: 10.01.2019 NIMIKRY, Porgy&Bess Vienna
commissioned by and written for NIMIKRY
recorded live @ Porgy&Bess Vienna, 10.1.2019
NIMIKRY: Alessandro Baticci, digital flute,
Rafal Zalech, digital viola
“Which was why, the wraith is continuing, the complete unfiguranted egalitarian aural realism was why party-line entertainment critics always complained that the wraith’s entertainments’ public-area scenes were always incredible dull and self-conscious and irritating, that they could never hear the real meaningful central narrative conversations for all the unfiltered babble of the peripheral crowd, which they assumed the babble was some self-conscious viewer-hostile heavy-art directoral pose, instead of radical realism.” (from David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)
Ghost Box Music – for ensemble and virtual narrator
line-up: flute, clarinet in B, 2 violins, viola, violoncello, accordion, zither, stereo-playback
duration: 13 minutes
date of premiere: 19.2.2018, Musikfabrik Süd, Gemeindezentrum St. Ruprecht Klagenfurt
Das Stück handelt von Zufall und dessen Deutung, Gesprächen von Verstorbenen mit niemals Geborenen (künstlicher Intelligenz), Täuschung durch Erwartungen und unsere Software-abhängigen Wirklichkeiten.
Über einen Lautsprecher wird ein Text mittels Text-to-Speech-Software wiedergegeben, indem die Entstehung der Komposition beschrieben wird, nämlich die Analyse zufälliger Radioaufnahmen hinsichtlich von Tonhöhenfrequenzmustern und vermeintlichen Geisterstimmen auf der Aufnahme.
I – La Marche de Scythes
II – La Sensible
line-up: flute/alto fulte, tenor recorder/alto recorder, harpsichord, electronics (stereo-playback plus subwoofer, clicktrack)
duration: 15 minutes
date of premiere: 13.10.2017, Airborne Extended, Minoriten Graz
The composition is based on pitch data extracted from two of the harpsichord pieces by the french baroque composer Joseph Nicolas Pancrace Royer, and an investigation in tonality.
In the first piece (la marche de scythes) all the notes of the piece where taken and sorted from the lowest to the highest. the result is an ascending, nearly chromatic line, repeating every note as often as it appears in the original piece. this leads to interesting tonal phenomenons, percepting tonality as a matter of statistical weights, as well as hearing a permanent leading-note.
The second piece steps through all the pitches of the piece in subsequently, merging them to chords, creating kind of pseudo-cadenzas and deformed harmonic developments.
matthias kranebitter 