There is a field of study called spectroscopy which all children become familiar with through the discovery of prisms. A deuterium lamp is used in spectroscopy to produce a continuous spectrum in the ultraviolet region, one could say an ultra-violet drone of sorts. This is music for a group of mixed string instruments, three of which are digital instruments from the pre-digital era. Do they exist as a medieval attempt to re-quantify the Zeno’s paradox of a fingerboard into keyed divisions?
The composition played in Mimerlaven (a large, concrete chamber, several stories in height, originally used for smelting ore) takes its point of departure from the study of a number of elements including organ registers and their allegories in analog synthesis and various experiments conducted with SuperCollider based synthesis and patterns. A descant of mechanical and non-pitched sounds is present around the edges of the ever dropping addition of elements in order to reach the highest and lowest frequencies of the group in a drone, specifically made to resonate well in the space of Mimerlaven.x
Deuterium: Mimer was commissioned by the Norberg festival in summer of 2015. This also saw the formation of the Deuterium ensemble, which was originally a quartet:
Lisa Gerholm - nyckelharpa
Bruno Andersen - hurdy-gurdy
Fredric Bergström - hurdy-gurdy
Katt Hernandez - F# violin
As a condition of the commission, the piece for Mimer was required to be a “drone” piece. The opportunity to do a drone piece as a first foray into working with these instruments served as an excellent way to learn basic things about their function and timbral possibilities. The piece, although made for a festival in a rural area, continues to be in connection with Stockholm, as the festival was an off-site arrangement of mostly Stockholm-based producers and organizations like EMS, Masskultur, Fylkingen, Konspirationen and Audiorama. The work was site-specific owing to its construction to specifically create standing waves and particular resonant effects in Mimerlaven.
Deuterium: Mimer. Norberg festival, 2015. Recording: Johan Antoni. Mix/Master: Johan Östman.
Note: my microphone broke during the opening two modules and was replaced, which is why there are large "boom" noises in the beginning.
The piece is structured after data from Deuterium as a substance, using the numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons in a Heavy Water molecule as source material. I assigned note values to these, and generated drone chords from them in SuperCollider. I then created 13 modules, using this tonal material as a base for quasi-improvised drone music. This number correlates to the number of barrels of heavy water which were in existence during World War II. Heavy Water, of which Deuterium is a component, is used in the creation of both nuclear energy and nuclear bombs. These barrels were smuggled across Sweden to Norway into hiding, very likely very near Norberg on their way, preventing the Axis powers from making a bomb. The modules are of adjustable length, making the piece the length of the 30-odd minute set I was asked to create. Fredrik Bergström made a clock for us to use in the performance on a shared iPad.
The previous year, I had spoken to Norberg’s then-head engineer, John Anker, about the acoustic properties of the remarkable space, and the gigantic multi-part speaker system he built to amplify it. He told me, among other things, that the huge concrete pillar at the center of the room would set up standing waves if enough of the right bass frequencies were directed at it, shaking the chamber like a concrete wine glass. I aimed to do this with this ensemble of string instruments, using nothing more than simple amplification, and was elated when I felt the first, massive standing waves form towards the end of the piece.
