HAILING
for orchestra
2015-17 (re-orch. 2021)
(2.2.2.2 4.3.3.1 timp.+1 perc. hp. pno./cel. str.)
11’
[…] ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals... or 'transforms the individuals into subjects... by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: 'Hey, you there!
Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was ‘really’ addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who was hailed’ (and not someone else) […]
Louis Althusser
Hailing is a short tone-poem dramatising the ‘theoretical scene’ described above by Louis Althusser, re-imagined as if it had been stretched out from just a few seconds, to about 11 minutes.
It was re-orchestrated in 2021 to accommodate a socially-distanced orchestra.