Albert Mayr

Parcours rythmé (1977)

When I was teaching in Montréal I often walked to the university across a small park. There were standing some metal barriers which gave a nice sound, when you hit them. But more than in that sound I became interested in the question what would happen if many persons indicated acoustically their daily rhythms and their passages from one place to another linked to these rhythms. (Of course, they do it anyway, with their cars. But I was thinking of discrete, 'hand-made' sounds, such as my beats on the barriers.)

The idea of coupling sound production with movements, which has been of interest also to other composers, stayed in my mind and led to various pieces and the workshop "Space <-> Time <-> Movement <-> Sound". The first piece along this line was

Parcours rythmé

for 6 or more performers

The basic score for the pieces consists in a relatively long route, outdoors or indoors, with a more or less regular rhythmic articulation (given by trees, lamp post, stair cases, and the like).

The performers walk along the route in both directions at constant speed, each performer choosing his/her own pace. The performers (except the first one) start with a relative delay corresponding approximately to 1/4 of one complete passage.

The piece consists in the transposition / translation of the fixed spatial rhythm into temporal / acoustic rhythm.

Depending on the conditions of the specific performance: planned total duration, length of the route and number of participants, the number of passages is determined. A score is written that determines the patterns according to which the performers will mark the times when they pass the elements of the spatial rhythm. Percussive and continuous sounds are used. Possible patterns for percussive sounds are:

1. pattern: 1 beat at every 2. element

2. pattern: 1 beat at two successive elements and pausing at the third element

3. pattern: 1 beat at three successive elements and pausing at the following three

Possible patterns with continuous sounds:

1. pattern: playing for two interspaces, pausing for one interspace

2. pattern: playing for one interspace, pausing for one interspace

3. pattern: playing for three interspaces, pausing for three interspaces

These patterns are distributed among the various passages according to the formal criteria chosen for the performance (e.g. from low density to high density to low density).

The result is a texture of percussive and continuous sounds that changes according to the individual walking speeds and phase shifts.

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