Little Etudes for Piano
Little Etudes is a series of short piano pieces based on cardiac electrical anomalies. Aberrant electrical activity in the heart can cause the heart to beat irregularly. Abnormal heart rhythms form interesting musical patterns, which raises the question of whether all natural-sounding musical rhythms have a physiological basis. By notating these electrophysiological anomalies as is done in contemporary classical music and matching them to fragments of existing music, collage compositions emerge that convey specific experiences of the cardiac conditions.
The Little Etudes were originally released singly, one per day, during World Heart Rhythm Week 2020. This rendition of all seven etudes includes introductions to each cardiac electrical aberration by Pier Lambiase, Professor of Cardiology, and is recorded / re-performed on the Bösendorfer VC280 Enspire PRO by sound engineer Daniel Bedoya.
Credit: Elaine Chew, EKG courtesy of Patrick Assayag
Project Credits / Acknowledgements
This video is part of the project COSMOS (http://cosmos.cnrs.fr) at the CNRS-UMR9912 / STMS Laboratory (IRCAM) in Paris, France. The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 788960).
Biographies
Elaine Chew (US/GB)
Elaine Chew is a pianist and researcher at the CNRS-UMR9912/STMS Laboratory (IRCAM), in Paris, France, where she is PI of the ERC projects COSMOS and HEART.FM, and a Visiting Professor at Kings College London. She designs and performs in concerts featuring musical visualizations and compositions generated by software developed in her research team. Recent creations include MorpheuS AI music with Dorien Herremans, and the Arrhythmia Suite and Little Etudes based on EKGs of arrhythmias.
Pier Lambiase (UK)
Pier Lambiase is Professor of Cardiology at the Barts Heart Centre in London, UK, where he is co-Director of Cardiovascular Research, Clinical Lead of Inherited Arrhythmia, and the British Heart Rhythm Society Committee Research Lead. He sits on clinical guideline committees for the European Society of Cardiology and International Heart Rhythm Society. He is a pioneer of minimally invasive devices to treat cardiac arrest and his research focuses on the mechanisms of heart rhythm disorders and sudden cardiac death.
Daniel Bedoya (EC)
Daniel Bedoya received his Bachelor’s degree in Sound Engineering at the Universidad de Las Américas in Quito, Ecuador, and a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Acoustics and Signal Processing in the ATIAM program at IRCAM-Sorbonne Université. He has worked at IRCAM with the Perception and Sound Design research team and is presently a doctoral student in the ERC project COSMOS in the Music Representations research team.
