RADIANCE VOL.

I
ALAP FOR STEEL NEEDLE,
RECORD AND THEORBE
by Stephan Mathieu

CD (July 2016)
Available as part of RADIANCE 12CD Box,
a subscription series on pre-order from
June 8th.
Digital Edition (out now)
Available seperately or as part of the
digital subscription series

ALAP FOR STEEL NEEDLE, RECORD AND

THEORBE, the rst part in the Radiance
series, goes back to a concept that
fascinates me for several years now the
interpretation of early music in a spectral
style. Between 2010-2011 I had worked in a
quartet with Che Chen, Robbie Lee and
Jozef van Wissem on a presentation of
Josquin des Prez songbooks where wed
pick an tonal skeleton from one song to
build a sustained version around it by
searching for its harmonic essence and
arrange it for a performance on period
instruments.
The search for an essence of a material is
fundamental to my work since computers
became my main instrument during the late
90s. All my releases are about this inherent

something, and RADIANCE Vol.I is the rst

album featuring an acoustic representation
of this idea.
When Florien Sievers, curator of Haus der
Kulturen der Welt in Berlin asked me for a
piece to perform during their POP 16 festival
(April 2016), dedicated to the rst 100 years
of pop music, I picked up threads of the
aforementioned notion by proposing an
hommage to early music pioneer and
instrument maker Arnold Dolmetsch, who
has recorded a handful of groundbreaking
78rpm records with performances realized
in a historically informed manner during the
late 1920s. By that time they where
regarded as a curiosity.
For this piece I found a great partner in
Stockholm based lutenist Peter Sderberg.
He plays the theorbe (also known as
theorbo), a Late Renaissance instrument
from the lute family that features an
extended bass range. The theorbe became
an integral part of the continuo group in
Baroque music.
One of Dolmetschs recordings served as a
tonal grid. As a foundation I created several
tape loops based on integral harmonies
from a piece he performed with his family
for the Columbia label, Thomas Weelkes
Fantasy for a Chest of Six Viols. Peter and I
decided on a selection of pitches based on
this historical recording and worked on
them independently of each other before
we met for two days of rehearsals in Berlin.

After the premiere we made recordings in

my hotel room, which were edited for the
release in my studio afterwards.
The virginals were played with 5 ebows,
Peter utilized a handheld fan to create a
spectral drone on the theorbe. The tape
loops are played back in the far background
and subtly interact with the sound of our
acoustic instruments, a soft modulation
which creates an extention to the certain
pitches, causing what sounds like a quiet
wonderful natural reverb.
A mixdown of the tape loops and a transcription of the historical performance by
the Dolmetsch Family is included as complementing material with this release.

https://schwebung.bandcamp.com/album/radiance-i-alap-for-steel-needle-record-and-theorbe