Souffle: Air and breath as a composition material

This project explores the construction of a musical language based on air and breath, expanded in their understanding through the concept of souffle. The research explores the ‘souffle’ paradigm, working on the timbre and texture of air and breath and on the role these multifaceted elements can play in the articulation of the musical form. While post-war and recent works have concerned themselves with the incorporation of air and breath as part of a wider range of technical possibilities and timbre-based sound vocabulary, the development of air as a full, independent sound state, perspective, overarching and self-sufficient composition system remains to be properly addressed. The concept of souffle ‘dissolves’ (or more exactly merges) the air and breath dichotomy, the duality between human (breath related) and instrumental (non-breath related) modes of sound production, allowing for the ability to focus on the fruits of their hybridization. By ‘diluting’ the breath/air (instrument/human) differences, new borders emerge and become materials for form, sounds and articulations. The souffle continuum (air, breath, friction) develops through several compositional directions. Nine works create a corpus to explore interrelated research foci and developments. Chamber forces explore timbre complexity and sound malleability. Large ensembles use the instrumental mass to work on energy. Electronic expansions, new or unconventional instrumentations investigate the ‘porosity’ and fragility of air – air as an omnipresent element in the instruments' workings and inherent (possibly unavoidable) part of the sound of both traditional and contemporary techniques, re-evaluated and ‘revitalised’ through the lens of souffle. Focusing both on the details and transversality of these complex elements, air emerges as a metamaterial investigated through three interrelated research axes: the air ‘tactility' (air as a form of contact), the air ‘resonance’ (the complex human-instrumental intertwinement and ambiguity) and the air 'multiplicity and energy’ (the extended developments through large forces). If the investigations are primarily compositional, they extend to broader reflections, perhaps inevitable in this context: perception and ambiguity, illusions and new temporalities, fragilities and instabilities, and air and sound porosities. Hybrid applications and extensions – i.e. the fusion (or confusion) of souffle with other sound phenomena or parameters – are key research axes. They develop compositional perspectives with other phenomena, parameters and (contemporary and traditional-classical) paradigms and approaches.