Kaps Freed

Music composition for piano and electronics.Composed 2017.You can use the MaxPatch provided (created by Stuart James) or create your own software to realise the score.You need the Decibel ScorePlayer and the associated score file to perform this work.Commissioned by Gabriella Smart. PROGRAM NOTEThis composition aims to bring the sound of the piano
as close as possible to the sound of Percy Grainger’s Free Music ideals,
by applying pitch tracking and spectral filtering. Delicate, sparse piano
pitches are sampled and transported into theremin like tones where the tempered
scale becomes irrelevant. The 'Kaps piano' is
the childhood piano of Percy Grainger, and resides in the Grainger Museum in
Melbourne. It was made in Dresden, Germany in 1887. Grainger practiced on this
piano daily as a child, presided over by his teacher and mother, Rose Grainger.
Hope has long been fascinated with Grainger's Free Music, having realised performances of the theremin
works. Kaps Freed imagines a link between his
childhood piano practice routine and his later investigations into Free
Music - a music characterised by the
emancipation of rhythmic processes and pitch, both explored in this, and most
of Hope's work. The piano notation is inspired by Albert Lake in Melbourne, the
same lake that is said to have been the inspiration for Grainger's theory
of Free
Music.PERFORMANCES MLive,Robert Blackwood
Hall, Monash University, Melbourne, April 2018.
Of Broken Trees and Elephants
Ivories, Callaway Auditorium, Perth, June 29 2018 and Beaumont
House Composers Residency, July 15 2018.Bratislava Music Academy, October 2018KuBa Saarbruecken, South Germany, October, 2018.LOFT, Cologne ,
October 2018 Montford University and Bournemouth University,
UK, December 2018 RECORDINGKaps Freed is featured on "Works For Travelled Pianos", performed by Gabriella Smart. Released in 2019 on ezz-thetics1012