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About this Piece

Once, when I was reading The Cyberiad by the Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem, and in particular the story of the attempt by a man called Trurl to invent a poetry machine, I was reminded of the Toimii Ensemble. (The Toimii Ensemble is a group set up by Magnus Lindberg, Anssi Karttunen, and myself to form a laboratory of musical ideas – the wilder the better.) I decided to combine a coloratura soprano with five instrumentalists (clarinet/contrabass clarinet, cello, piano, synthesizer, and percussion), all amplified in order to create a timbre that relates to pop music, while the composition techniques and the syntax of the musical language belong very clearly to the mainstream post-serial avant-garde.

The Homeostatic Homer is learning to be a poet; onomatopoeia becomes poetry. At the same time, the musical language evolves from primitive gestures towards more complex expression. The ultimate product of the electro-troubadour, a love poem within the realm of tensor algebra, is set to dodecaphonic rap music.

Floof is dedicated to the members of the Toimii Ensemble: to the restless souls with whom I shared some of my strangest musical experiences.

— Esa-Pekka Salonen