Rithmomachie by Laurent Fairon
"Do not play this piece fast.
It is never right to play Ragtime fast."
Scott Joplin
(quoted in E. L. Doctorow’s 'Ragtime' novel, 1974
and Wikipedia's Ragtime article)
Rithmomachie is an album of Ragtime piano approximations for MIDI sounds programmed in a sequencer, without any pretention to compose actual Ragtime tunes, but simply to explore similarities between mechanical piano, tack piano and digital sequencer. While toying around with ideas of 21st century Ragtime music, I came up with these macaronic piano rags, disembodied piano études, Cubist lullabies, pieces for odd number of hands, and other impossible piano configurations. Despite the Scott Joplin quote above, some of this music is quite fast—but also desperately slow in some cases. Considering that some of these tracks featured radical piano sound manipulations and grotesque sound effects, I felt the need to create 2 new tags on Bandcamp, namely: 'dungeon piano'—obviously derived from the better known 'dungeon synth'— as well as 'wobble piano'—for. . . wobbly-ous reasons. Album title Rithmomachy refers to a Medieval board game with a strong mathematical dimension. Game, rhythm & math seemed a fitting description of this music.
The models I had in mind while composing these tracks were: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Leo Orstein's 'Suicide in an Airplane', Pierre Charial's mechanical piano, Frederik Croene's Piano Démécanisé and Bob Bellerue's Damned Piano. Expressionist movies were also a huge inspiration and I might have succeeded if any of these tracks can pass for plausible alternative music to a scene in Murnau's Nosferatu or Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Music composed and arranged by L.F. for MIDI piano sounds.
Total time: 36'20''
Recorded in June 2021 in Paris, France.
Artwork: L.F., based on 19th century silhouette drawings and Elephant typeface.
English translation:
Rithmomachie [Rithmomachy]
01 La grotte d'Emma Kunz [Emma Kunz' cave]
02 Fille d'usine [Factory girl]
03 Berceuse cubiste [Cubist lullaby]
04 Nostalgie de Wou Ling [Wou Ling's longing]
05 Moloch motiv [Moloch's melody]
06 Ostinato doux amer [Bittersweet ostinato]
07 Tracts largués d'un hélicoptère [Helicopter leaflet drop]
08 Daguerréotype lunaire [Lunar daguerreotype]
09 Respiration à l'octave [Octave breathing]
10 Au Théatre de l'Ambigu [At the Dubious Theater]
Tracklist
| 1. | La grotte d'Emma Kunz | 4:29 |
| 2. | Fille d'usine | 3:21 |
| 3. | Berceuse cubiste | 3:18 |
| 4. | Nostalgie de Wou Ling | 3:47 |
| 5. | Moloch motiv | 2:56 |
| 6. | Ostinato doux amer | 3:33 |
| 7. | Tracts largués d'un hélicoptère | 2:32 |
| 8. | Daguerréotype lunaire | 2:02 |
| 9. | Respiration à l'octave | 3:33 |
| 10. | Au Théatre de l'Ambigu | 3:00 |
| 11. | Au Théatre de l'Ambigu (coda) | 3:48 |
