Pe'ery Hadas

Hadas Pe’ery (1986)

A native of Israel, Hadas Pe'ery began her musical studies with the violin, then the piano. As an adolescent, she also played contrabass, bassoon and horn in various orchestras and ensembles ; this exposure to different types of ensembles and repertoire inspired her to begin to orchestrate and later to compose.  In 2004 she enrolled in the Mannes College of Music in New York, where she studied composition with Robert Cuckson and theory/musicology with Carl Schachter. After obtaining Bachelors of Music diplomas in both composition and musicology in 2007, she moved to Paris, where she studied composition with Jean-Luc Hervé, Philippe Leroux and Thierry Blondeau. Introduced to musique concrète by Christine Groult, she later studied musique mixte with Philippe Leroux. She is currently pursuing a Masters in composition assistée ordinateur at University Paris 8, where she is researching and developing real-time treatments of the voice under the guidance of Anne Sedes and Horacio Vagionne,  She also participated in various international composition masterclasses, such as the IRCAM academy in Glasgow and the Bartok Festival in Szombathely, during which she studied with Jonathan Harvey, Johannes Schöllhorn, Clemens Gadenstätter…
Hadas Pe'ery's music has been played and commissioned by many ensembles, such as Ensemble Court-Circuit, Ensemble Cairn, and Ensemble tm+ in France; the Chelsea Symphony, Lunatics at Large, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in America; Ensemble Meitar and HaTeiva in Israel.  Her music has been strongly influenced by the experience of living in several major cities and integrating in different cultures; her arrival in Paris and the exposure to electro-acoustic music proved to be particularly important to her musical development.  In her recent compositions, she has focused on the development of gestures and their articulation, as well as continuity and rupture within the musical discourse. Rhetorical thought lies at the root of much of her compositional work.

WORK PRESENTATION
Firstly, I would like to state that I consider myself to be at the very beginning of my path, in a very formative state. My music has changed significantly in the past few years, and will hopefully continue to change. I therefore do not wish to speak definitively about my style, but rather to discuss certain elements present in my recent compositions, as well as those derived from my education and experience.
I would like to discuss three intertwined aspects of my music : gestuality, states of energy, and rupture.
My interest in gestures was engendered by my studies of electroacoustics, and especially of the unités sémiotiques temporelles. These are a series of semiotic descriptions of various movements or energy situations (such as étirement, freinage, chute), defined by the distribution of energy in time. I found the idea of creating musical representations of such situations – that are very clear and understandable on a physical and corporal level in daily life – particularly appealing. When playing an instrument, the corporal aspects of music are quite obvious; likewise, when listening to music, these elements can be easily felt. When composing, however, I find the corporal aspect inadequate, or not sufficiently palpable.
I therefore began to introduce musical gestures into my compositions about 2 years ago. By gesture, I mean to say, a musical object that can be identified by its dynamic profile, by the direction of its energy, by its "drawing" if you will, rather than by its harmonic content. Over time, I found that the use of the aforementioned gestures changed my formal thought. When a  gesture is meticulously drawn and carefully detailed, its own intrinsic qualities can dictate the form to some extent. Each gesture has a certain potential to evolve and vary which can be deduced from its internal structure. Therefore, by "listening" to a gesture's potential, I find it possible to create a form that is a natural outgrowth of the gesture itself. This process allowed me to conceive of an internal form derived from the musical material, rather than to conceive of an external form and impose it upon the material, as I had previously done.
I would also like to briefly discuss my thoughts on energy states and rupture, which are closely related to my work on gestuality. When composing, I perceive musical ideas firstly according to the state and direction of their energy. In each piece, I try to create a grammar derived from the natural – or unnatural – flow of energy in both gestures and phrases. In my recent compositions, I have often used rupture as a means of managing energy, of rendering less predictable the grammar that I created. For example, rupture may be used to avoid the climax or the ending of a gesture or phrase. The rupture may be expressed on many levels: it may be violent or subtle, physical or conceptual. Sometimes the rupture can be a mere deviation from what seemed to be the original direction. I believe I am drawn by directionality and rupture as they are a reflection my lifestyle: I tend to make very clear and logical plans, which are quickly interrupted by life's unexpected twists and turns.
All these elements of my music can be observed In the piece that you are going to hear, "Very Sad Ending" for cello and electronics. The piece is based on the idea of a protagonist, if you will, who is obstinately attempting to accomplish something, but to no avail. He tries again and again, each time investing a huge effort, slowly running out of energy, but never succeeds. Though this is a rather frustrating image, I also find it quite comical.
The use of electronics was conceived in such a way that the performer and electronics play equally important roles. At first, the electronics orchestrate or color the cello part, creating a "super-instrument" by extending the cello's capabilities. The electronics then slowly break away from the cello, creating conflict and interruptions, and bringing the piece to its end.