Cyborg Flesh

When Irvine invited me, in 2021, to write a piece for the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the Arditti Quartet, I had a brain fry. On the one hand: how could I not oblige when given the opportunity to write for such a legendary group of musicians. On the other hand: how could I write for such a legendary group of musicians? And for a medium, the string quartet, that carries such a heavy aura, so deeply rooted in the 19th and early 20th century? Unable to immediately reconcile those contradictory feelings, I asked for some time to think it over. It seems like Irvine had read my thoughts though. Not long after our talk, he wrote me, asking if I’d fancy writing for the joint forces of the quartet and the electric guitar of Yaron Deutsch. It was as if I was suddenly handed the key to unlock this heavy wooden door behind which I could already see a fascinating sonic world to explore. I had just spent 18 months writing an electric guitar “concerto”, under_current for Yaron, which was premiered at Donaueschingen in 2021, and had a lot of material from this composition that I could imagine developing further and confronting with a string quartet in a myriad of different ways. But my head kept spinning. Since many years, Yaron and me also play in the improvisation band, The Ministry of Bad Decisions. We even performed as such, together with percussionist Brian Archinal, at this very festival in 2015. Imagining the combination of Yaron and the Ardittis, I was curious to see what would happen if I’d also bring this other, improvisational side of our musical DNA in play. Happily ignoring the common knowledge that one should never invite oneself to other people’s party, I proposed Irvine to add a sixth performer to the group: myself, improvising on live-electronics. This setup would ultimately give me the opportunity to develop a hybrid electro-acoustic sound world, in which I would be able to take enough distance from the historical sound of the string quartet – of which the strings are heavily prepared for the occasion – on the one side, and of the references of jazz and rock music, as carried by the electric guitar – augmented through a battery of effect pedals - on the other hand. A sound world in which I could interweave an “analog”, 19th century medium with 21st century electronic and digital media, all with their own sets of references. A sound world, lastly, in which the sacred 19th and early 20th century idea of the fixed score is offset by the more communal grittiness of music which is spontaneously improvised in the ever-changing “now”. I imagined a weird sonic cyborg of which the human flesh is interwoven by nano-wires that carry digitally generated, electric impulses, making it move, spasm, breathe, sing and shriek in unpredictable ways, in search of its very own identity. Cyborg Flesh is dedicated in admiration and friendship to the Arditti Quartet and Yaron Deutsch. (Stefan Prins, Berlin, 5th of September 2024)