Giner-Etudes de Peaux #2: Satz-P

Satz is the second of five works in Bruno Giner's Études de peaux cycle, a series of solo and small ensemble pieces for skin instruments composed between 1995 and 2000 and published by Éditions Durand. Written in 1995 for five toms, the piece was premiered by Françoise Rivalland at the Théâtre du Renard in Paris. It is one of the more substantial works in the cycle, and one of the most compositionally rigorous solo tom pieces in the contemporary percussion repertoire.

Giner's approach blends the combinatorial method of serialism with the timbral thinking of musique concrète, using a fixed rhythmic "invariant" as the basis from which timbral, dynamic, and tempo variants are generated across the five voices of the tom setup. The piece also makes covert structural reference to Varèse's Ionisation, drawing on a transformed version of its rhythmic motif as a numerical series that underpins the formal architecture. The result is a work of considerable intellectual depth that also rewards live performance with its physicality and rhythmic drive.

Work Details

• Composer: Bruno Giner (b. 1960)
• Duration: 9:00
• Number of players: 1

Instrumentation

• 5 toms