Niels Lyhne Lokkegaard - Saturations (2021)

Saturations is a composition by Danish multidisciplinary artist Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, and features a clarinet choir consisting of 19 clarinet players.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities working within the domains of imaginary & physical sound as well as other non-sonic media. Since 2012 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear in another form by way of multiplication of sound.

His work with multiplication of sound has led to numerous compositions in which one instrument is multiplied a number of times. His work includes a composition for 9 pianos, another for 10 hi-hats and yet another for countless triangles and so on....

The multiplication brings out bodily timbral phenomena, interference of sound waves and vibrations, evoking what Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard calls the sound’s "potential of transformation." He describes this as the quality in a musical piece when you no longer hear recognizable instruments and the individual sound, as well as the individual musician, is dissolved into the whole.

A sonic as well as human synthesis.

He explains the concept of this sound as follows:

“Imagine you enter a room with vibrant acoustics, such as a cafe full of people having conversations, and when you’re close to those conversations you hear the language and understand the words. If you step away from the tables, however, and stand in the doorway, you begin to lose the ability to distinguish the words from one another. Now instead of hearing the individual conversations, multiplication melts all the conversations and transforms them into one new sound. A sound of people without words and language. Just as when you hear a group of geese squawk, or the wind in treetops, a kind of nature-given sound of people. Once the language is dissolved and the words stop making sense, what is left, is the sound."