Coronialus

Coronialus (2020) commemorates the fact that the Beethoven year 2020 was ridden with the new coronavirus. Generated by an electronic transformation of a time-stretched sound recording of the first two chords of Ludwig van Beethoven's Coriolanus Overture Op.62, the individual samples of the stereo recording stretched – for three versions of the piece (see below) – from 6 to 75, 91 and 112 seconds were manipulated by information contained in the genome of the coronavirus. This genome contains exactly 29,903 nucleobases, identified as adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil. Further, the molecules of these four bases each consist of a typical number and arrangement of atoms of the four chemical elements hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. In Coronialus, the molecular arrangement as well as the valency and atomic number in the periodic table of each individual atom in the genome form the basis of a continuously micro-time-varying downwards frequency transposition through specific sample repetition. This technique in turn led to a second temporal expansion of the already elongated sound recording.
Three versions of Coronialus have been made; their durations are 4'43", 5'34" and 7'18". The transformed second Beethoven chord begins just after the middle of the piece. The title - an anagram of 'Coriolanus' - contains the word 'corona' as well as the abbreviation RNA of the acid containing the genome.