Henriëtte Bosmans in eigen naam het zwijgen opgelegd

Vandaag is het internationale vrouwendag, met veel aandacht voor vrouwelijke componisten op de Concertzender, BBC3 en het internetstation Second Inversion. Onze eigen klassieke zender Radio 4 laat de dames helaas grotendeels links liggen.

Jammer dat mijn programma Componist van de week niet meer bestaat en dat ook de aanvullende programmering van het Vrijdagavondconcert is geschrapt. Daarin had ik immers veel ruimte om werk van vrouwelijke componisten onder de aandacht te brengen.

Deze maand herpubliceer ik een reeks columns die ik een decennium geleden over de veronachtzaming van vrouwen schreef.

Componist m/v (2)
Verschenen in tijdschrift Luister december 2004

Wees niet bang, ik ga u niet wéér vragen welke namen u te binnen schieten bij het woord componist. Ik weet immers dat u als oplettende lezer onmiddellijk op de proppen komt met Hildegard von Bingen, Josina van Boetzelaer en Henriëtte Bosmans. Jammer genoeg lezen concertorganisatoren en artistiek managers de Luister kennelijk minder goed, want ook dit seizoen is het aandeel van vrouwelijke componisten op onze vaderlandse podia bedroevend klein.

Neem de Nederlandse Muziekdagen, die in december weer drie dagen lang in Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht plaatsvinden. Sinds jaar en dag klinkt hier muziek van mannen, een enkele excuus-Calliope of -Caroline uitgezonderd. De huidige aflevering vormt hierop geen uitzondering, daarom noem ik het festival steevast de ‘Nederlandse Mannendagen’.

Dit keer tref ik echter één hoopgevend onderdeel: op zondag 12 december wordt de Henriëtte Bosmansprijs uitgereikt, vernoemd naar een van de kleurrijkste Nederlandse componisten van voor de oorlog. Zij studeerde bij Willem Pijper, maar liet diens droogkloterige kiemceltechniek voor wat hij was en schreef aansprekende muziek met een impressionistische flair, verwant aan het werk van Lili Boulanger en Claude Debussy.

Maar wie zijn de finalisten? Niet de avontuurlijke dames Mayke Nas; Astrid Kruisselbrink of Rozalie Hirs, maar drie heren: Lars Skoglund, Edward Top en Jeroen Roffel. Van een naar een vrouw vernoemde prijs had ik een iets evenwichtigere man/vrouw-verhouding verwacht. Op zoek dus naar de samenstelling van de jury – en warempel, ook die bestaat geheel uit mannen.

Ik vraag de lijst met winnaars op. Sinds 1994 is de Henriëtte Bosmansprijs zes keer uitgereikt. Niet één keer aan een vrouw! Terwijl juist in het afgelopen decennium een hele generatie boeiende vrouwelijke toondichters is opgestaan, die het verdient gehoord en onderscheiden te worden.

En welke muziek klinkt er tijdens de feestelijke prijsuitreiking? Juist, geen noot van vrouwen, zelfs niet van de naamgeefster van de prijs. Zo wordt Henriëtte Bosmans in haar eigen naam het zwijgen opgelegd.

#AstridKruisselbrink #CalliopeTsoupaki #Concertzender #HenriëtteBosmans #HildegardVonBingen #LiliBoulanger #MaykeNas #RozalieHirs

Peter Eötvös composes organ concerto based on string theory

On October 19, Peter Eötvös will conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Dutch première of his organ concerto Multiversum, that was commissioned by the ensemble. His brand new composition is flanked by György Ligeti’s ground breaking Atmosphères and Claude Vivier’s Orion.

Transylvania

The Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös (Székelyudvarhely, 1944) was born in Transylvania. Yet, towards the end of the Second World War his family fled to the West for the advancing Russian army. They reached Dresden on the very day it was bombed: “My family survived, however”, says Eötvös, “and hereafter we returned to Hungary, where I grew up.”

Transylvania has a long history of now belonging to Hungary, then again to Romania, and has a rich music tradition. “My musical mother tongue is formed by Bartók, Ligeti and Kurtág,” he says. “It is striking that they, like me, are from Transylvania. There a very particular way of thinking prevails, an idiosyncratic type of expression. I feel much closer to them than to the thoroughbred Hungarian Zoltán Kodály.”

Eötvös also worked closely with avant-gardists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez. He soon became one of the most important conductors of contemporary music and was conductor of the renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain for many years. As a composer he made his name with opera’s based on theatre plays, such as Anton Tchechov’s Three Sisters, and Jean Genet’s Le Balcon.

Concert organ and Hammond organ

In 2006 he composed the piano concert CAP-KO for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In this, the soloist not only plays a concert grand piano but also a midi keyboard that complements each played note with another.

In Multiversum, Eötvös also focusses on two related instruments: a concert organ and a Hammond organ. It was inspired by his “lifelong fascination for the cosmos. In recent decades, revolutionary discoveries have been made. Most importantly, the concept of the multiversum: beside the visible universe there are many parallel universes.”

Musical and cosmic vibrations

“According to the string theory, everything in the cosmos is moving on both a macro and micro level, just like music, which comes to life through vibration. I see a strong relationship with musical polyphony, in which multiple voices are layered in various ways.

In Multiversum the sound of the concert organ comes from the front. The Hammond organ is also on stage, but its sounds reach us through loudspeakers placed around the hall. In between we hear the orchestra. Thus I create a musical “cosmos” around the audience.”

Inflatable planetarium

The concert is part of the Horizon series, which focuses on the relation between science and music. Vincent Icke speaks about the string theory before the performance of Multiversum; graphic artist Jaap Drupsteen shows visualizations. Students from the University of Amsterdam present an inflatable planetarium.

Afterwards, in Entrée Late Night, chamber music is performed by musicians of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, including the new ‘parallel world [breathing]’ of the Dutch composer and poet Rozalie Hirs.

Rozalie Hirs creëert dromerig muzieklandschap in ‘parallel world [breathing]’

Al eeuwen zien wetenschappers verbanden tussen muziek en de ordening van het heelal. Het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest nam dit als uitgangspunt voor zijn concert op 19 oktober in de serie Horizon. In samenwerking met de Universiteit van Amsterdam wordt een ‘polyfone kosmos’ gerealiseerd. Peter Eötvös componeerde hiervoor het orgelconcert Multiversum, Rozalie Hirs schreef ‘parallell world [breathing]’. Het stuk van Eötvös beleeft zijn Nederlandse première; de compositie van Hirs was 7 oktober al te horen op Amsterdam Science Park en klinkt nu tijdens de afterparty.

Hirs componeerde ‘parallel world [breathing]’ in opdracht van de Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica van de UvA. Uitgangspunt was een kamermuziekstuk rond het thema Multiversum, voor vijf musici van het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest. Een kolfje naar de hand van de componist, die zich al sinds 1997 bezighoudt met onderzoek naar de wetmatigheden van klank. Tijdens het componeren combineert zij een intuïtief creatief proces met wetenschappelijke frequentieberekeningen. Hierin is zij verwant aan zogenoemde ‘spectralisten’ als Tristan Murail, bij wie zij studeerde.

Droomachtig muzieklandschap

Het nieuwe stuk ‘parallel world [breathing]’ is het eerste deel van de nog te voltooien cyclus ‘parallel worlds’. ­– Niet voor vijf, maar voor acht musici. Dit heeft vooral een praktische achtergrond. ‘Ik was uitgegaan van een bezetting van fluit, klarinet, piano, viool en cello’, zegt Hirs. ‘Maar er bleek geen goede piano op locatie te zijn. Ze vroegen of ik in plaats daarvan een harp wilde inzetten. Omdat ik inmiddels een behoorlijk deel van de pianopartij af had, besloot ik de harp te combineren met slagwerk. Voor de rijkdom van de harmonieën voegde ik een extra strijker toe, een altviool. Vanwege de zwaarte van de partij werden het uiteindelijk twee harpen; ik gebruik bovendien elektronische klanken.’

De titel ‘parallell world [breathing]’ verwijst naar de parallelle werelden van het Multiversum, een thema uit de snaartheorie. Hirs: ‘Dit eerste deel van de cyclus is gebouwd uit tere harmonieën, met gebroken akkoorden van vibrafoon en harp. Die kunnen opgevat worden als metafoor voor wind rond de wereld, of adem van de mens. De uitgesponnen klanken voeren de luisteraar mee door een droomachtig muzieklandschap dat herinnert aan minimal music en spectrale muziek. Het is een meditatief stuk vol beweging.’

#ParallellWorldBreathing #KoninklijkConcertgebouworkest #PeterEötvös #RozalieHirs #UniversiteitVanAmsterdam

Rozalie Hirs: ‘A song is no longer poetry, it is music’

Just out: Een os op het dak: moderne muziek na 1900 in vogelvlucht, for sale at this link.

Rozalie Hirs (1965) is multi-talented. She has made a name for herself as a poet and as a composer. For Dreams of Airs she wrote the poems as well as the instrumental and electronic music. The cycle is inspired by the physical phenomenon of binaural beating: when your left and right ears are offered two almost identical tones, your brain creates a third (phantom) tone that consists of the difference in frequency between the two. This creates an ultra-low tone, which can evoke different moods. Dreams of Airs was premiered in November Music in 2018, and will be again performed in TivoliVredenburg on Sunday 6 January.

Hirs was born in Gouda and studied chemistry at the University of Twente and composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, with,Diderik Wagenaar and Louis Andriessen. In New York she continued her studies with the French spectralist Tristan Murail at Columbia University. In 2007 she obtained the ‘Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)’ there with her dissertation on spectral composition techniques and the composition Platonic ID.

She published six collections of poems, verses from which were included in several anthologies of best Dutch poetry. She also writes in English and German, and in 2017 her multilingual collection gestammelte werke appeared at the German publisher KOOKbooks. Her poetry and music are both lyrical and experimental. She often combines traditional instruments with electronic sounds and collaborates with visual artists and graphic designers.

Though Hirs regularly recites her own poems, whether or not embedded in music, Dreams of Airs is her first full-length poetry/music cycle. The title has an ambiguous meaning. “When Irish people pronounce my surname, it sounds like ‘airs’, so it’s about ‘dreams of Hirs’. On the other hand ‘air’ is the English word for song or melody, so at the same time it concerns ‘dreams of melodies’. This refers to the memory of melodies, of which only the text and the rhythm remain. For me, a song is no longer poetry, it has become music because of the composer’s interpretation. With spoken language you stay closer to the original poetry. You show the rhythm of language, which has not yet become singing.

This time Hirs does not speak her verses herself, they are recited by Nora Fischer. “In the thirty years that I have been reciting poetry, I have developed my own speech melody. It has taken me years to translate my typical intonation and speech rhythm into a notation, so that my piece can be performed even when I am no longer around. The funny thing is that at the premiere my mother had the feeling that I was on stage myself, so the notation had truly captured the essence of my voice.”

The speech melody, the rhythm and the intonation are all fully composed. “But because I didn’t want to force Nora to imitate my voice, I indicate the pitches with crosses. It sounds natural and simple, but at the same time it is very specific, because I have my own conception of tonality. All tones are connected to each other and are always present to a greater or lesser extent, only the centres of gravity shift. Nora must stay true to the overall form – the Gestalt – but may transpose it to her own root tone. The dreaming from the title refers not only to the meditative, contemplative way in which the poems are expressed, but also to their content and the way they are treated musically.

Most of the texts are in Dutch, but there are also German and English verses. “The libretto begins with an emerging day and ends with an apotheosis, a philosophical reflection on love, based on an idea of Erasmus. I see Dreams of Airs as a Manifesto for Europe, for expressing oneself in different languages is a first step in communication. It is humanistic and idealistic, it is about the freedom of imagination, about inner seeing and hearing. I look at it from the individual’s perspective. You can reach out to another person by speaking their language. This includes not only the melody and the meaning, but also the sound itself. – Speaking that is, not singing.

The binaural beatings function as sound spaces that bring the listener into a certain state of mind. The left and right loudspeakers have slightly different tones. If there are also differences in timing, you get a spatial sound. In my piece, both an electronic spatiality and a feeling of pulse are created. To enhance the latter effect I insert extra electronic pulses. My intention is that as soon as your brain creates such a binaural beating, this frequency evokes states of mind such as meditation, alertness, creativity, dreams or flow.

The cycle has seven movements, in which only a few times the full ensemble plays. “I built the piece from the fifth movement, Infinity Stairs, a trio for flute, bass clarinet and electric guitar. That’s the only movement in which the voice doesn’t participate, so the listener gets some rest. This trio is about ascending and descending, just like the infinite ascending and descending steps in the famous etching of Maurits Escher. I have tried to translate this optical illusion into an auditory illusion – tones you think you hear but that don’t actually sound.

The other movements were shaped around this. “It opens with bird twittering, a solo flute and solo voice, in the second movement the voice comes together with a number of instruments. The third is a tutti about an encounter with death, it is an ode to life. The fourth movement is for solo voice and describes the physical desire. Part six is about the sea, and the concluding poem is a hymn to love, in which all instruments come together with the voice. In essence, Dreams of Airs is one big daydream about imagination, how language arises, while speaking and dreaming.”

6 January 2019, 8 pm: Rozalie Hirs Dreams of Airs, TivoliVredenburg Spectra Enaemble & Nora Fischer / Filip Rathé; visuals by Boris Tellegen and  Geert Jan Mulder. I’ll moderate an interactive talk with Hirs after the concert.

#dreamsOfAirs #FilipRathé #NoraFischer #RozalieHirs #SpectraEnsemble

Rebecca Saunders composes music like a sculptor

Women composers invisible? Yes, they are still very much underrepresented in most concert series, though not in this season’s NTRZaterdagMatinee. Of the five compositions the German Ensemble Musikfabrik presents on 18 May, four were written by a woman. Among them the British-German Rebecca Saunders, who was recently awarded the Ernst von Siemens Prize 2019. Helen Bledsoe will play Bite for bass flute solo.

Saunders, born in London in 1967, studied violin and composition at the University of Edinburgh. In 1991 she received the German DAAD stipend, with which she studied composition with Wolfgang Rihm at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. After three years she returned to Edinburgh, where she obtained her doctorate with Nigel Osborne in 1998. A year earlied she had moved to Berlin.

Magical physicality

Saunders has won many prizes, was a visiting professor at the renowned Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Huddersfield University in 2018.

She is particularly interested in timbre and likes to explore the possibilities of instruments by means of playing techniques of her own designing. ‘For me what’s really important is enabling the listener to feel the magical physicality of sound: the timbre, the colour, the mass and the weight of sound,’ she once said. She compares herself to a sculptor working with different materials.

Her scores are teeming with detailed instructions, sometimes she also employs objects such as metronomes, radios, record players and mechanical music boxes. In her music she regularly refers to artists and writers, such as James Joyce and Derek Jarman. In her recent work, she often leans towards Samuel Beckett and his fascination with shadow and silence.

This also applies to Bite for bass flute solo, which she composed in 2015 for Helen Bledsoe, Musikfabrik’s solo flute player. It is part of a series of solo pieces she has written in recent years for performers with whom she has worked together closely; in her score she explicitly thanks Bledsoe for their pleasant ‘sound sessions’.

Daunting solo

The score is quite daunting. The flutist produces quarter tones and multiphonics, plays with Flatterzunge and has to constantly – and – quickly switch between (extremely) fast and (very) slow tempi. The dynamics vary from the softest pianissimo to the loudest fortissimo. Meanwhile, Bledsoe whispers, sings or shouts texts by Beckett in her instrument, giving the physical sound a different colour and intention.

On her website Helen Bledsoe describes Bite as ‘a massive, expressive, sighing and ranting piece for bass flute with low B’. She premiered it in 2016, one critic praising it for being was ‘quite athletic’. Yet two years later Saunders made a revision in which she deleted several parts. This version will be performed for the first time in the concert on 18 May, after which Bledsoe hopes to record it for CD.

NTRZaterdagMatinee 18 May, Concertgebouw Amsterdam 2pm
Musikfabrik/Emilio Pamárico
World premières by Rozalie Hirs and Sander Germanus; further works by Rebecca Saunders, Unsuk Chin and Carola Bauckholt

#CarolaBauckholt #HelenBledsoe #Musikfabrik #NTRZaterdagmatinee #RebeccaSaunders #RozalieHirs #UnsukChin

Fie Schouten & Katharina Gross explore crossovers between clarinet and cello

Bass clarinettist Fie Schouten and cellist Katharina Gross have made their mark as champions of experimental contemporary music. In 2022, they formed their eponymous duo. According to their website they specialise in ‘contemporary, international repertoire, in which both instrumentalists take pleasure in making all kinds of sounds in the lower frequencies resonate, merge, or contrast’. This remark appears to be spot on.

Kaja Saariaho

The album opens with Oi Kuu (Oh, moon) by Kaija Saariaho, who died in 2023. The Finnish composer became famous for her intricate sound fabrics that seem to constantly change colour. She created these by so-called spectral techniques that unravel sounds and their overtones into their smallest components. These in turn serve as the basis for new, often mercurial timbres.

The bass clarinet opens Oi kuu with a tone swelling from the depths like a ship’s horn, the cello answers with equally dark sounds. Gradually, a call-and-response game unfolds in which the instruments seem to be probing for their similarities and differences. It is one elongated, poetic exploration, in which flageolets and languid glissandi of the cello alongside multiphonics and Flatterzunge-trills of the clarinet create a dreamy atmosphere.

Rozalie Hirs

The title piece bee sage, which Rozalie Hirs composed especially for Schouten and Gross in 2023, is also based on spectral composition techniques. The title refers to white sage, also known as ‘bee sage’, a plant associated with purification, healing and spiritual practices. This piece builds on Hirs’ earlier article 10 [prisms] for solo cello, to which the composer has added a part for bass clarinet.

Bee sage grosses in melodic lines and resonating chords in the very low regions. Deep, droning tones of the bass clarinet lay a sonorous foundation against which the cello places nimble motifs, which the clarinet takes over or imitates. It is not always evident which instrument produces which sound. Moreover, due to a special compositional technique, we hear gurgling sounds that seem to be produced by one’s own perception rather than by the instruments themselves. Fascinating and enchanting.

Doina Rotaru

Romanian Doina Rotaru asks the two musicians in Masks to play small percussion instruments in addition to their own. The piece originated in 1989 but did not receive its final form until 2024, specially tailored for Schouten and Gross. According to Rotaru, the four parts represent as many imaginary masks, which are separated by gong beats.

The Prologue begins with a firm sweep across the gong, after which the two instruments engage in a spirited dialogue. Sharp outbursts in the high register of the clarinet are answered by sonorous, reclining lines culminating in abrupt swishing glissandi of the cello.

In the remaining movements, Rotaru juxtaposes fierce, screeching sounds of the clarinet with buzzing sounds of the cello, favouring the Flatterzunge technique on the clarinet and bouncing tremoli of the cello. In the last two movements, we also hear the rattling of a tambourine and the tinkling of small cymbals.

Tolga Tüzün and Dmitris Andrikopoulos

Turkish pianist and composer Tolga Tüzün revels in brutal rhythmic outbursts and more lyrical, gently encircling motifs in Dyssynchrony. Initially captivating, the piece soon ceases to engage our interest, and fails to hold our attention for its 11 minutes.

Greek-Dutch composer and viola player Dimitris Andrikopoulos based When You See for Schouten and Gross on a poem by Charles Sorley (1895-1915). It is an indictment of glorifying people who sacrifice their lives in war. When You See is a beautifully subdued lament, punctuated by short staccato motifs of cello and clarinet that evoke the ratcheting sound of machine guns.

Wide variety of sound worlds

The five pieces on bee sage are a good illustration of the versatility of both instrumentalists. Their playing is to perfection and always in the service of the music; effortlessly Schouten and Gross master a range of challenging extended playing techniques. The quality of the recording is superb, as well. The music breathes and gets all the space it needs to fully blossom. In passing, the album gives a nice overview of the wide variety of sound worlds that modern music has to offer.

#DmitrisAndrikopoulos #DoinaRotaru #FieShouten #KajaSaariaho #KatharinaGross #RozalieHirs #TolgaTüzün

De nieuwe #Awater is uit, met mijn stuk over 'dagtekening van liefdesvormen', de prachtige nieuwe #DichtBundel van #RozalieHirs. Ik ging een aankondiging schrijven, en dat mondde weer uit in een stukje over Hirs, #PaulCelan, #GhayathAlmadhoun en #InspectorGadget. Lees hier: https://www.joostbaars.nl/post/wat-is-po%C3%ABzie-1-progressieve-heimwee

#poezie
#poëzie
#gedicht