Lea Bertucci and Norbert Rodenkirchen: The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity

Experimental composer Lea Bertucci presents her new composition, The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity, a striking work for sampled and live archaic flutes unfolding within an eight-channel spatial audio environment. Crystalline in texture yet richly dissonant, the composition draws from folkloric and early music traditions to create a haunting meditation on time, duration, and memory that evokes the primeval and the futuristic simultaneously. Reaching across centuries of musical history, The Days… channels ancient sonic practices into a contemporary experimental framework, forging a stunning encounter between historical performance and contemporary sound art.

The work was written for master flutist and early music scholar Norbert Rodenkirchen, a major player in the early music world as a member of the legendary ensembles Sequentia and Dialogos, among others. Rodenkirchen’s remarkable collection of flutes, assembled over decades, features rare instruments seldom heard in modern performance, spanning the Renaissance, Medieval, and even Neolithic eras. Bertucci orchestrates The Days… with five of these instruments: Medieval traverso, swan bone, sheep bone, Renaissance tenor, and Renaissance bass flutes. Rather than live processing these instruments, Bertucci uses pre-recorded samples of each instrument which are then deployed live across an eight-speaker array, creating a spatialized field of resonant drones, melodic fragments and psychoacoustic textures.

Rodenkirchen performs live fragments of ancient songs and improvisations connected to the origins of the instruments themselves. Sustained tones and a distinctive isopolyphonic interplay between live flute and electronic diffusion define the work’s form. Pulsing drones circulate through the multi-channel system, forming a lush, dissonant sonic bed over which the flute appears to contract and expand the point of live origin into a diffuse, architectural presence throughout the space. Through this interplay of ancient timbres, The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity invites listeners into a new mode of listening that traces the depths of musical history while reflecting on our contemporary upheavals, offering visions of sublime beauty within the wreckage of the present.

Presented in partnership with Experimental Sound Studio.