For Hannah

Year of composition: 2018/2019
Length: 9’20”

For Hannah is a multichannel acousmatic music piece inspired by the royal cobra (Ophiophage Hannah). I wrote this composition because the first time I heard the hiss of this animal, I was surprised by how it sounded like a musical phrase. Forcing this comparison, I asked myself: do cobras play electroacoustic music? I deepened my knowledge of the animal through the studies of herpetologist Bruce A. Young who kindly sent me some of his recordings of the reptile. The idea was to evoke how this animal perceives the world, its sound production strategies and behaviors. I decided to compose a multichannel piece dedicated to this snake because the sounds that characterize this animal are suitable to spatialization strategies. The sounds produced by its movements can easily evoke sinuous and enveloping circular trajectories. In addition, their hissing sounds are easy to localize since humans have developed a good ability to localize sounds that may refer to dangers (Byrne & Nobel 1998).

The piece was chosen as finalist at the International composition competition Città di Udine 2018.


For Hannah – Performances

  • Codes d’accès, Conservatory of Montreal, Montreal, Canada, 11/28/2019.
  • Evimus Festival, Saarbrücken, Germany, 11/02/2019.
  • International Colloquium: Space-Immersivity, Mexico, 10/26/2019.
  • ICMC, New York, United States, 06/24/2019.
  • File Festival São Paulo, Brazil, from 06/25 to 08/12/2019.
  • XVIII International Image Festival, Manizales, Colombia, 07/11/2019.
  • Audior, La Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy, 01/25/2019.
  • Teatro San Giorgio – Udine, Italy – 10/20/2018.
< >