Kaps Freed
Music composition for piano and electronics.
Composed 2016/2017, and released on CD in 2020.
You can use the MaxPatch provided (created by Stuart James) or create your own software to realise the score.
You need the Decibel ScorePlayer for iPad and the associated score file (extension .dsz) to perform this work.
Commissioned by Gabriella Smart.
PROGRAM NOTE
This composition aims to bring the sound of the piano as close as possible to the sound of Percy Grainger’s Free Music ideals, by applying pitch tracking and spectral filtering. Delicate, sparse piano pitches are sampled and transported into theremin like tones where the tempered scale becomes irrelevant. The 'Kaps piano' is the childhood piano of Percy Grainger, and resides in the Grainger Museum in Melbourne. It was made in Dresden, Germany in 1887. Grainger practiced on this piano daily as a child, presided over by his teacher and mother, Rose Grainger. Hope has long been fascinated with Grainger's Free Music, having realised performances of the theremin works. Kaps Freed imagines a link between his childhood piano practice routine and his later investigations into Free Music - a music characterised by the emancipation of rhythmic processes and pitch, both explored in this, and most of Hope's work. The piano notation is inspired by Albert Lake in Melbourne, the same lake that is said to have been the inspiration for Grainger's theory of Free Music.
PERFORMANCES
MLive, Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Melbourne, April 2018.
Of Broken Trees and Elephants Ivories, Callaway Auditorium, Perth, June 29 2018
Beaumont House Composers Residency, Perth, July 15 2018.
Bratislava Music Academy, Czech Republic, October 2018
KuBa Saarbruecken, South Germany, October, 2018.
LOFT, Cologne, Germany October 2018
DuMontford University and Bournemouth University, UK, December 2018
Monash University, June 2020
Forum Jetzt Musik, ChristianKirche, Hamburg, Germany March 2023
RECORDING
Kaps Freed is featured on "Works For Travelled Pianos", performed by Gabriella Smart. Released in 2019 on ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records, Switzerland, 1012.