Flo Menezes - “Perpetui decoris structura“ (2022), acousmatic piece

“Perpetui decoris structura“ Acousmatic piece for 16 channels. 10’32“ This is a binaural version to be heard exclusively with good headphones and good sound level. In September 2022 I worked as Guest Composer at the prestigious EMS (Elektronmusikstudion) in Stockholm, Sweden. It lasted only one week, but the visit resulted in an important experience: in a record in my life, in only 3 days in the studio – from September 20 to 22 – I produced an entire 10’32“ acousmatic work for 16 channels, which was premiered in octophonic version the next day, September 23, in my concert at the Black Box Theater of the Fylkingen society. The material consists of some sounds treated from recordings recently made in Brazil of a few percussion instruments (within a Fapesp-supported Thematic Project, then in full swing in São Paulo), but mainly of sounds elaborated on analog synthesizers, submitted, however, to granular synthesis in Max/MSP, and consequently strongly metamorphosed. As is well known, this important and traditional European studio, founded in the 1960s, although very well equipped with modern systems, is characterized by the presence of modular analog synthesizers, with a marked presence of Buchla synthesizers. I couldn’t miss this opportunity and on September 21st I worked for hours on the Buchla 200 black knob synthesizer, extracting from it about 40 minutes of very interesting sounds, which became even more attractive when subjected to a multifaceted granular synthesis, sometimes in octophony, sometimes in 16 channels, that is, in a shattering of fast sound fragments throughout the listening space. The experience with the Buchla led me to retrieve sounds I had made on a Moog synthesizer as soon as I arrived in Germany in 1986 to work as a composer at the Studio für elektronische Musik at the Cologne Highschool of Music, founded in 1965 by Herbert Eimert. That was the first Moog synthesizer to arrive in Europe, and I had never used in a piece of my own the sounds I produced with it in those years. Since I carry them with me along with millions of other sounds, I had them on hand! As EMS technician Henrik Jonsonn had pointed out to me, the principle by which the Buchla synthesizers were designed is opposite to that of the Moog synthesizers: while, in general terms, the sounds produced by the Moog start from relatively complex spectrums and tend to be “simplified“ as they are manipulated, the Buchla sounds in general start from relatively simple spectrums that become more and more complex. The EMS advocates the “Buchla cause“, but precisely for this reason I rescued the sounds I had made with that Moog and tried to combine both sounds coming from the two analog historical synthesizers in the same context, subjecting them all to the granular synthesis that transforms them radically anyway. As a result, both sound families end up remarkably close, revealing sounds of great beauty, in an oscillation or simultaneity of harmonic and inharmonic sounds. The visit in the days preceding my stay in Sweden to the German city of Aachen, where my younger son Rafael lives with his wife, revealed to me at the top of the Cathedral of that city an inscription that caught my attention for a beautiful expression with 3 Latin words: “perpetui decoris structura“, that is, “of the eternal beauty of the structure“ or “work of eternal beauty“. Speculation and sensibility seem to unite in this phrase, and that is how I used the expression as the title of the new piece, composed in only 3 days of intense work and consisting of 3 parts: the first part consists of percussive instrumental sounds; the second, mostly Moog sounds; and in the third and last part, percussive sounds return, but one hears predominantly granular sounds from the ones I made with Buchla on EMS. All 3 parts have their beginnings demarcated by percussion/resonance type hits, as sound “signs“ of structural demarcation: membranes blows demarcate the first and last parts, while metallic blows punctuate the beginning and the end of the central part. While the form of “Perpetui decoris structura“ is relatively simple, its synchronic structuring is very complex, because the principle that governs the work is that of polyphony, of layered composition, in a dense polyphonic and at the same time kaleidoscopic weave through which the listener, each time, focuses on aspects that, on repeated listening, will give way to other aspects, other events. Flo Menezes Video of Flo Menezes working at EMS in Stockholm with the “Buchla 200 black knob“ synthesizer: