Alessandro Perini – “stones / sand / clay” (2023)
for French horn with custom-made mouthpiece and tape
Written for Sören Hermansson
This piece is composed as a trio, with two other French horns playing in the stereo electronic track, one in the left channel and another in the right channel. All sounds were recorded at EMS in Stockholm and are organized according to degrees of granularity, using as a starting point the geological cycles of erosion and sedimentation of stone. An exception is made for one sound: the kalimba tine embedded in the custom-built mouthpiece, a leftover from Interplay, which triggers a very short resonance in the horn. The resonance was recorded and its spectrum expanded in the tape, punctuating the non-pitched material along the composition.
The specially designed 3D-printed mouthpiece serves three purposes: it hosts the kalimba tine (actually a rake’s tooth), allows for what I call “finger-ram”, a miniature version of the palm-ram usually employed as an extended technique for brass instruments, and, most importantly, lets the hornist produce non-pitched sounds of any kind without accidentally emitting a standard tone.
Designing the first version of the mouthpiece:
Alessandro Perini 