soundcloud.com/maxvinetz/hautepate
maxvinetz
www.maxvinetz.com/
Premiered by Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, August 14, 2024 at Harris Concert Hall, Aspen, CO
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble
Tim Weiss, conductor
Sasha Ishov, flute/piccolo
Clayton Luckadoo, bass clarinet
Liam Kaplan, prepared piano
Reed Puleo, percussion
Herdis Guðmundsdóttir and Laura Gamboa, violins
Felix Vesser, viola
Miles Reed, cello
Program note:
HAUTEPÂTE is named after the painting technique pioneered by French artists Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet. The technique itself, haute pâte, translates to “matter painting” and involves using paper, gravel, and sand in addition to oil paint to create three-dimensional, relief-like surfaces that project outwards from the canvas. Years ago, I was introduced to Fautrier’s “Les Otages” series, which the artist created after hearing Nazi troops abusing and executing prisoners in the forest near his studio space in Paris. This series features abstracted and disembodied human remains that bear little resemblance to living human forms. While writing this work, I was thinking of violent, institutional brutality (both abroad and within the US) as well as how we compartmentalize this terror away. I attempted to represent this mental rift with two highly contrasting musical materials-one heavy and aggressive with frayed edges and forceful onsets, the other chipper and bright with tight rhythmic synchronicity. In the spirit of the haute pâte technique, I was interested in composing and developing complex musical gestures that, to me, sounded three-dimensional, almost as if rising from the surface of a painted canvas.