Isotropes

“Uniformity in all directions” is the scientific meaning of isotropy, a term often used in mathematics, physics and biology. In Isotropes, these particles that remain equal when moving around in different directions are used as a metaphor for the sounds that surround and fuse with the audience. Electronics are being used to merge the 16 voices and the 4 saxophones.

With compositions of Jonathan Harvey, Eric Sleichim, Matheus de Sancto Johanne, and Petrus Abaelardus we hear a surprising mixture of contemporary and early music. Breath, the origin of the earliest music, establishes the link between both.

Eric Sleichim wrote his Isotropes de l’ombre based on a text by Leonardo Da Vinci describing how the extinction of the sound of a bell is a phenomenon that takes place mainly in the ear. The constant interaction between saxes and choir promises you a concert that literally and figuratively exudes contemplation. Isotropes de l’Ombre is, despite its distinctly dissonant harmonies, a piece that will especially appeal to the dreamers among music lovers. Just as cloud fanatics can spend hours gazing upwards to see how their beloved objects of study keep changing shape, in Isotropes their musical counterparts can surrender to the fluidly evolving contours of sound. The work’s rarefied, imperceptible and spacey sound make comparisons with Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna obvious. Long notes from the choir are rolled out before the listener like monotonous steppes, piled up and taken away again. Sixteen voices and four saxophones (perfectly embedded in the choral sound) thus build a more than 18-minute air castle that only gets a jolt twice: once when a metallic saxophone sound prevails, but especially at 11’25”, when suddenly there is more movement in the choral parts and melodic fragments seem to emerge. Seem, because composer Eric Sleichim quickly returns the misty aesthetic that has dominated the work until then.