Daniel Teruggi

This work could have been named »Insondables« in French – with a slight ambiguity between ‘sound’ and ‘probe’ which in French are ‘son’ and ‘sonde’. In English, the word ‘sound’ in »Unsoundable« refers to sound and probe, without changing the writing and it has also several other meanings: reliable, deep, sure, imperturbable… Faced with this profusion of meanings, English won in my imaginary quest for places to which we cannot access and which have a sound dimension that escapes our hearing. Places that we see or perceive but where access is impossible and which represent possible sound universes. We can then send a probe there, in this case mental and imaginary, to explore these places.

The mental probe explores those places, situations and spaces to which our body has no access. And, like a probe we would send to the underground, we discover different universes, sometimes similar to the ones we know, sometimes totally impossible. Several short situations follow one another like a quick trip to these unsoundable places, each with its family of sounds, its space and its logic. Although the places are referenced in my work, there is no need to give the clues. The listener’s imagination will easily identify them.

Commissioned by Musiques & Recherches

Author: Daniel Teruggi

My grandfather’s name was Bernhard Hildebrandt Dawson. He was born in 1890 in Kansas City, USA and died in 1960 in La Plata, my birthplace in Argentina. Dawson was an astronomer and went to La Plata in 1912 to work in the new astronomical observatory which had just opened. In 1942 he discovered a new double star which he named Nova Puppis. Thanks to this discovery, he received the David Pickering medal in 1942 (a kind of Nobel Prize for astronomers). Asteroid 1829, located in the asteroid belt, is also named after him. Likewise a crater on the dark side of the moon. This strange man, who lived with us and who spoke very little, died when I was 8 years old. I have distant and intrigued memories of him and his passion for the spheres, as well as his late-night life.

His books were marked with the following Exlibris, taken from a poem by Goethe: "Like the star […] without haste, but without rest" ... that was his motto.

Therefore, this work is a tribute to his discovery and to the passion he had for searching beyond the limits of the visible. Somewhere in the sky Nova Puppis is always there and I am especially interested in the fact that this star is double. That is to say two inseparable objects which make one for our perception. I always explore duality in my music with this idea that one is not enough. For me, it takes at least two for things to work. I am not trying to imitate or mimic anything in the behavior of this star, but am freely inspired by my grandfather's thoughts and emotions and his perseverance to unlock the secrets of the universe.

So I invite you to listen like the stars, without haste, but without truce.

Commissioned by the GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales)

Author: Daniel Teruggi

Loudspeakers are an extraordinary invention. The fact that a cardboard membrane vibrates and thus reproduces any sound is almost like a mystery! It reproduces sounds, but these are not exactly the same as sounds in our environment are, which irradiate in all directions while loudspeakers tend to be directional (spherical loudspeakers exist but have not yet become largely diffused). To make this difference stronger, and since we have two ears, after the “monophonic” sound in the first half of the twentieth century, “stereophony” became the standard reproduction model, where the fact of having two loudspeakers that reproduce the same information but with slight differences, gives a spatial and movement perspective to sound.

Loudspeakers have highly dominated our listening environment. Since the 1960s, attempts have been made to introduce a three-dimensional listening perspective. Four tracks, eight tracks, 5.1, 7.1, etc. are different configurations in which the listener is immerged in sound through surrounding loudspeakers, many of these configurations having had their origin in the film industry. When composers work with these environments, they use different spatial strategies which can imply that each loudspeaker will be reproducing a different sound, the same sound coming from several loudspeakers or sound moving from one loudspeaker to another, thus creating trajectories. These and many more spatial strategies have enriched acousmatic sound over the last decades.

In »Punctus spatio«, many of the available loudspeakers are considered as punctual sound producers. Sounds reproduced by them come from that loudspeaker only, giving a kind of “sound identity” to each of them. Other sounds invade the whole space or suggest movements and trajectories, thus interacting with the Punctus.

But »Punctus spatio« is not only a story of points and movements… Punctual sounds are the main starting element, but music is the result. Points merge into lines, lines form surfaces and these lines and surfaces in turn create images in our minds. Space creates the charm, the fusion of perception points which interact with our memories, imagination and our extraordinary capacity to organize sounds in form.

This work is dedicated to the memory of a good friend, Bill Brunson from Stockholm, who recently left us.

Commissioned by the ZKM | Hertz-Lab

Author: Daniel Teruggi