1997-2020: GRAN HALL

GRAN HALL is an acoustic climate of indefinite duration – as long as the listener wants – that is automatically built into the mix of three independent sound emissions of different lengths that are repeated indefinitely, building various climates caused by time lag between the three emissions.

Now, after 20 years of the first release of GRAN HALL, watching and listening to television the new technique of broadcasting debate programs, or of people who speak for a long time, I hear a background of musical sound that accompany in an almost imperceptible way the voices of the protagonists. They should be done to make it more digestible, but I see, I hear, a repetition system that evokes procedures of a metaphysical past, such as walking a long time in a Romanesque cloister, going around, repeating the paths, which enable an immediate mental concentration.

It is not the same, but it is the same.

Vacca 05/18

GRAN HALL was shown on the 26th of September 1997 in the entrance hall – hence the title – of the Museu de Granollers, within the exhibition DIES IRAE, in a single audition on the opening day. The piece included random fragments of the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner, which were eliminated in subsequent versions. GRAN HALL operated by means of three reproduction sets playing the cyclically randomized soundtracks.

GRAN HALL is a work that, so far, consists of thirteen different versions made between 1997 and 2020. All of them are musical appropriations constructed like a collage – Vacca modifies parts, interposes elements, eliminates fragments – creating new compositions, new scores, when in fact, paradoxically, there is nothing new at all. A great sound-bank with the link in common of belonging to the key of the musical note Fa (F). Vacca decided to give the subject of the originality of a work of art another twist: versioning oneself.

1997 GRAN HALL – Museu de Granollers

2004 GRAN HALL MÍTING BLOC

2005 GRAN HALL – La Capella, Barcelona

2005 GRAN HALL – Stand Roca Umbert, Granollers

2005 GRAN HALL – Palau Ducal dels Borja, Gandía

2006 GRAN HALL EUROPA – Fonda Europa, Granollers

2006 GRAN HALL METRÒNOM – Memorial Metrònom, Barcelona

2006 GRAN HALL SCHUBERT – Shubertiada, at Vilabertran

2007 GRAN HALL – Espai MX 1010, Barcelona

2013 GRAN HALL DOMÈSTIC – LOW TECH – Roca Umbert, Granollers

2018 GRAN HALL – CAC La Sala, Vilanova i la Geltrú

2019 GRAN HALL – Sant Joan Chapel, Vilafranca del Penedès

2020 GRAN HALL – Eufònic Festival, Tortosa Museum

It all arose from a version that John Zorn made of the music Ennio Morricone made for Sergio Leone’s film “A Fistful of Dynamite”. Zorn did something absolutely unique, and I stretched out the sounds to bring them to a slow and severe register of solemnity. The resulting thirty-two tracks had to be reproduced randomly on three independent machines that would return to the beginning at the end of each recording. A “da capo” with no foreseeable conclusion. Machine 1, called INCIDENT, reproduced thirteen tracks; machine 2, called RESIDENT, reproduced nine tracks; machine 3, called RESIDENT II, reproduced ten of them. None of them were the same length, so that the sounds would coincide and repeat over such long time spans that the circumstance could be ignored. Later GRAN HALL was used to construct GRAND HALL, a piece for smart phones that can be linked to three independent reproduction machines; this work is described in another section.