Goeyvaerts & Ustvolskaya – man & woman with a hammer

In February 2017 Het Collectief combined the radical music of Galina Ustvolskaya with the celestial sounds of Hildegard of Bingen. Less curious than it may seem, for both were profoundly religious and composed from inner neccessity. In 2017 Spectra Ensemble placed Ustvolskaja alongside Karel Goeyvaerts in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam. Ustvolskaya is well-known in the Netherlands, but who was Karel Goeyvaerts?

Spectra Ensemble

Musical pioneer

Karel Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp in 1923, the city where he would also die 70 years later. He studied composition at the local conservatoire and took lessons in music analysis with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. Inspired by his enlightening analyses Goeyvaerts decided to use the different musical parameters as the starting point for his compositions. He not only serialized pitch, but also duration, intensity, tone colour and articulation. Thus he was one of the founders of the so-called integral serialism.

The first outcome was his Sonata for two piano’s, which he performed in Darmstadt in 1951 together with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Searching for even more possibilities he discovered electronics. In 1953 he wrote Composition nr.5, the first work ever being built purely from sinus tones. But while Stockhausen and his colleagues Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono continued to further develop serial and electronic music, Goeyvaerts more and more missed the human aspect.

Aquarius

Goeyvaerts stared composing religious pieces incorporating stylistic elements from the baroque era, as in his Passion for orchestra (1963). Moreover he experimented with vocal nonsense sounds in compositions such as Goathemala voor mezzosopraan and fluit (1966). In the 70ies he was inspired by American minimalism. He composed repetitive pieces, with the five numbered Litanies for varying line-ups as a first highpoint.

From 1983 until shortly before his demise, he worked on Aquarius. In this opera he expressed his longing for a better society for everyone. Comparable to Stockhausen, who for years made almost every new composition part of his opera cycle Licht: die Sieben Tage der Woche, Goeyvaerts henceforth considered each new work as a sketch or preliminary study for his own magnum opus.

The tile Aquarius refers to the astrological idea of a new era that would commence towards the end of the 20th century. Then the world would enter the age of Aquarius. This would initiate a utopian society with completely equal interpersonal relations.

Zum Wassermann

In 1984 Goeyvaerts composed Zum Wassermann for string quintet, woodwinds, brass, piano and percussion. This was performed by Spectra Ensemble, and can be seen as the chamber music blueprint of the first act of Aquarius. The four movements correspond with its first four scenes, in which man seems to make a false start on his way to the future. The ideal situation is not (yet) being achieved.

In ‘Vorspiel’ (Prelude) man is curtailed in his individual endeavours. Short, eruptive motifs that not really take off, evoke the struggle of a caged creature. The following ‘Erwachen’ (Awakening) starts with an exuberant dance, but ends in shrill dissonance. Pounding percussion forces the prisoner back into his cell. A nice parallell with the furious beats on a wooden coffin in Ustvolskaya’s Composition nr. 2, ‘Dies Irae’.

In movement 3, ‘Wassermann-Gesang’ (Aquarius-Song), lyrical lines spiral around and through each other in supreme harmony. This represents the intuitive, ‘feminine’ view of the new world. The fourth and last movement of l ‘Zum Wassermann’ symbolizes the rational, ‘masculine’ approach.

It opens with frolicking, hocket-like motifs that become more and more asynchronous and cacophonic. The laborious attempts to escape from the straitjacket of rationality get bogged down in languid descending melodies and twisted harmonies. With a few firm blows of the percussion the last remnant of hope for a new utopia is definetly destroyed.

Late premiere

It lasted until 2009 before Aquarius was finally premiered, in a co-production of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and Holland Festival*. Nor is Zum Wassermann often performed. A pity for Goeyvaerts’ music is distinctly expressive and has a great emotional eloquence. — Just like the work of Ustvolskaya. No matter how different in temperament, Goeyvaerts pounds his message into our souls at least as compellingly as ‘the woman with the hammer’.

I interviewed conductor Filip Rathé in a pre concert talk on 26 October 2017 in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ.

*In 2009 I made a reportage for Cultura.

#Aquarius #FilipRathé #GalinaOestvolskaja #KarelGoeyvaerts #KarlheinzStockhausen #SpectraEnsemble

Dirigent Filip Rathé: ‘Karel Goeyvaerts was een groot componist’

Donderdag 26 oktober speelde het Vlaamse Spectra Ensemble een concert met Compositie 1-3 van Galina Oestvolskaja en Zum Wassermann van Karel Goeyvaerts. Beiden volgden  radicaal hun eigen weg, ook al nam Goeyvaerts een wat kronkeliger pad dan Oestvolskaja.

Ik schreef eerder een voorbeschouwing over deze bijzondere combinatie, die het helaas niet erg talrijke publiek in het Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ zeer bleek aan te spreken. De uitvoering was bijzonder intens, met pianist Gerard Bouwhuis als gedreven aangever in Oestvolskaja, en Filip Rathé als een dansante dirigent in Goeyvaerts.

Tijdens ons voorafgaande gesprek toonde Rathé zich een begenadigd verteller, die boeiende inzichten in het werk van Goeyvaerts verschafte, en zelfs spontaan een taalcompositie improviseerde om het verschil duidelijk te maken tussen minimalisme en repetitieve muziek.

Ik nam het gesprek op met mijn smartphone en zette het op YouTube.

#FilipRathé #GalinaOestvolskaja #KarelGoeyvaerts #MuziekgebouwAanTIJ #SpectraEnsemble #ZumWassermann

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