Peter Gilbert and Karola Obermüller, An Overlapping of Spaces

An Overlapping of Spaces is an installation for the Davis Museum and Cultural Center by Peter Gilbert and Karola Obermüller.  This sound installation features six different compositions whose beginnings and endings are suspended…waiting, hanging in time as overlapping spaces sounding from above.

Visitors use an Apple iTouch control panel to select from the six compositions in creating their own unique listening experience.  If multiple pieces are activated they will go into a kind of “suspended time” with only one piece at a time moving forward, picking up wherever it last left off, telling its story in the context of the other suspended pieces.

The sound weave speaker system for An Overlapping of Spaces is a multi-channel listening space created by Kevin Brown of Brown Innovations for the Perceiving Space in Art installation. The form was inspired by the weaving of sound waves that come together in music to form a solid piece. The speaker system utilizes the 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound format to control six channels of audio.

This sound installation is part of the permanent collection gallery, Perceiving Space in Art.  It has been funded by The J. Paul Getty Trust, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Wellesley College Friends of Art, and a gift from Jeannette Donovan in memory of her daughter Jean Donovan ’76.

Neñia for soprano and guitar (Gilbert)
Carlos Guido y Spano’s poem Neñia puts a moving, personal face on a terrible and incredible moment in world history: The War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), which was the bloodiest conflict in the history of the Americas. The cries of the Ûrutaú bird echo the heartache of a young girl who lost her beloved in the bloodshed at Timbò.  Indeed, the scenario Spano (an Argentinian poet) describes must have happened many times. Paraguay had in fifty years of independence become a completely modern, industrial nation. A landlocked country, Paraguay’s leaders in the 1860s got caught up in expansionist desires to acquire coastal territory. The result was a war against Brazil and Argentina and Uruguay which brought the death of 60% of the country. The male population
was particularly decimated, only 10% of the prewar men surviving.

Burn for clarinet, guitar, cello, piano and percussion (Gilbert)
mix and heat over open flame for 6 to 8 minutes.
bubbling may occur.
certain notes will solidify. stir.... bring to boil.
cover. let simmer.
chords will clump. don’t bother to stir this time.
allow to cool.

Helical for chamber orchestra (Obermüller)
Helical is an at times dangerous adventure with uncertain outcome, like all art. In “helical”, music assumes the shape of two entities. Each has its own distinct sound and timbre, its own rhythm and form. The composition traces the gradual mutual mergence of the two entities. The way towards the mergence describes a helical movement. It is a movement towards the inside and towards depth. The moment we enter into the music is the moment when the energy fields of the two entities begin to converge.  Changes of location occur, accumulate. A narrow corridor opens up to wide space: fast rhythm and a dense, defined spectrum gushes out and falls into slow beats and wide, indefinite spectra. The entities are being sucked into these helical funnels and catapulted out again. Explosions in slow motion. With increasing intensity and pressure, we reach the complete interpenetration of the two entities. Inside the innermost, a new dawn is breaking. It is here that we leave the music, quietly, gently ... (sshh!) ...

Untitled for piano (Gilbert)
Fast flickering of light           across the surface of the water.
       A nighttime journey           along the Bay of Naples.
                Colors gleaming              from the sides of volcanic rock.
                       Shapes and speed.             But mostly light.
                            And the persistent pulsings           of water
                              against the driving prow,
                          against the emergent shores,
               against the last wave, against the next.

Nichts fettes, nichts süßes for clarinet, saxophone, piano and percussion (Obermüller)
This piece came to me
through the merest suggestion
in a note from R. Schumann
about his digestion,
telling to his cook
what he could and couldn’t eat
including the strict:
“Nothing fat, nothing sweet.”

Poor Robert, dear Robert,
“Nichts Fettes, nichts Süßes”
because in the end
it’s dessert that he loses.
So to fill up the void,
something sweet, something fat.
Like a round circus clown
in a red pointy hat.

reflejos distantes for bass flute, bass clarinet, violin and cello (Obermüller)
Every now and then you encounter a person whose particularity lingers with you. In 2006, I met the Spanish composer Federico Mompou. It did not matter that he had already been dead for 19 years – we had a very deep and special encounter in his piano pieces “Mûsica Callada”. He described them as being “the voice of the silence itself”. I replied that I found them to be persistent, in a state of suspense—an in-between state—and very delicate.  Before I met Mompou, I had finished a difficult piece about Nazi euthanasia. I had not been able to compose for some time afterwards; I was in a state of shock and exhaustion. Meeting Mompou in his tender music helped me reconnect with mine. I found reflejos distantes behind the veil of “Mûsica Callada”.

Click here for a pdf of the An Overlapping of Spaces gallery handout

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