ARNOLD DREYBLATT presented the World premiere of his piece “Descendants Music for Four Pipe Organs in One Space” on April 7, 2025. The work wascommissioned by the Echonance Festival in 2024 especially for the multiple organs in the Orgelpark, Amsterdam. He developed the work during two residencies at the Orgelpark. The 50 minute work was performed by Dreyblatt, Reinier van Houdt, Claudio F.Baroni and Lucie Nezri.
Descendants is conceived in the just intonation “Dreyblatt” tuning system comprising only the first eleven harmonic overtones and their multiples based on the fundamental C (A at 415 Hz). Selected pitches were found on four of the historic and reconstructed organs at the Orgelpark. The composition is in six parts, exploring the possible tonal combinations and filling the hall with gradually changing resonances. The public was free to either sit or wander in the space,shifting one’s acoustic perception from different perspectives.
A CD recording of the performed composition at Orgelpark will be released in 2026 on “Echonance Editions” in collaboration with “Unsound Records”, Amsterdam.
Commissioned Composition for Automated Pipe Organ, Aggregate Festival, Berlin
Performed for the digitally controlled pipe organ at the Auer Church in Berlin-Wilmersdorf on November 30, 2024
Time Duration: 30 minutes
Article Berlin Tagespiegel (Dt) 27.11.24 >
Arciorgano Organ, amplified electric bass prepared with music wire, mechanical transducer, software audio processing.
In 2022, Dreyblatt was commissioned by the Music Section of the Akademie der Künste to develop a composition for the "Arciorgano", a reconstruction of microtonal organ by Nicola Vicentino from 1560 with 36 tones per octave and midi control.
Dreyblatt developed the composition in collaboration with Johannes Keller at the Musikakademie Basel and it was performed as part of the "Winter Musik" concert program in December 2022. Mr. Keller created a digital midi interface especially for Dreyblatt's tuning system.
In February 2024, Dreyblatt was in residency at the Musikakademie Basel in conjunction with Johannes Keller in order to continue his project with the Arciogano. During the residency, he gave a private concert and made numerous recordings.
“Arnold Dreyblatt (...), was also able to work with the Arciorgano thanks to modern technology. For an Internet connection made it possible to play the instrument in Basel from Berlin and to experiment with it. In his piece "Constructive Interference," Dreyblatt brings the organ together with the sound of a converted electric bass, whose sound he modifies with the help of paper strips. Electronically amplified, this interplay gives rise to idiosyncratic sound surfaces, hills, mountains, towers, suspensions, in which the specific sound of the arciorgano recognizably emerges, inserts itself and disappears again. - MusikTexte 176, February, 2023
January 31,1999; Kresge Pipe Organ, Kresge Auditorium, Massachussets Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Arnold Dreyblatt, Conductor, Keyboards, Pedals
Organ Loft: Christine Southworth, Derek van Beever, Melissa Mazzoli, Rebecca Zook, Mike Tarkanian, Ryan Rifkin, Nikhilm Vinod Mittal
In 1999, I was invited by Evan Ziporyn to lead a workshop in tuning and acoustics during the IAP intersession program at MIT which resulted in a concert of pieces with and by the workshop participants. I had always had an interest in pipe organs, and when I saw the gigantic organ at the Kresge Auditorium, I developed a composition, in which I alone was visible at the organ keyboard while seven students were perched hidden in the organ loft. While I pushed and held pre-arranged keys in a sequence, the performers cupped their hands at the pipe mouths and with the stoppers, changing timbre and causing glissandi (rare in my music). The extremely low and high pitches filled the enormous hall with dense harmonic textures.
The work appeared on the LP : “Choice” on Choose Records, 2013.
