Playing on the Edge 3

MISE-EN is a collection of works that share a common sound ideal and conceptual instrumentation. Work on this collection began in 2018 while collaborating with the Ensemble MISE-EN in South Korea under the auspices of the Oil Tank Culture Park Global Network in Seoul.

The resulting work, MISE-EN Series I, is an electroacoustic work scored for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano, Percussion, Ableton Live, and Acousmatic Sound. This work was meant to reflect the aesthetic agenda of Ensemble MISE-EN, whose name roughly translates from Korean to English as meaning “decorative beauty.”

To achieve this goal, Lopez decided to write a work for chamber ensemble which would reflect a larger sonic landscape than what might be considered traditional chamber writing. He thus included live and prerecorded electronics in the scoring and composed with two divergent but complementary musical components: “sound tapestry” (“beautiful”), and ornamentation (“decorative”).

Series I is the first of a series of works based on this concept of “decorative beauty”. To simplify logistics, the Ableton Live part, which would otherwise be performed by a seventh ensemble player, can be mixed with the Acousmatic Sound recording. The World Premiere of MISE-EN, Series I in November 2018, was performed by the Ensemble MISE-EN with this alternative version.

It only occurred to Lopez after completing this first work that he could expand and extend MISE-EN as a series of works. To implement this while retaining the underlying sound ideal of “decorative beauty” for all works of the series, Lopez decided to pair electroacoustic devices with a different legacy or standard acoustic ensemble for each follow-on work. Thus, Series I is scored for a slightly modified “Pierrot” ensemble. Series II is scored for Amplified String Quartet and Acousmatic Sound. In 2021, the first Episode of Series II was selected by the Sirius Quartet for recording by PARMA to be released on the Navona Records label, CD and streaming audio. The opening Episode presents a tightly woven contrapuntal texture that is eventually painted against a contrasting broad and richly scored melodic line. The juxtaposition of this contrasting content awaits further exploration, as this first Episode ends with a question marked by the remnants of an ascending and fading contrapuntal cascade. The ornamentation of the contrapuntal texture frames the beauty expressed in the soaring cantabile, thus delineating a formal framework that harkens back to a bygone era, an era that nevertheless remains alive and essential in the creative work of Lopez.