In the beginning of April the conductors class of my school did a workshop with a small semi-professional orchestra in Prague and decided to bring a new piece by a composition student with them, to be played in a concert with that orchestra, together with music by Haydn (Symphony no. 8, "Le soir"), Elgar (serenade for strings), and Stravinsky (concerto in Re). I was lucky to be allowed to write this piece for them.
So, a month ago, I went with the conductors to Prague for a couple of days to rehearse and perform that piece. I have now finally got the recording of it, so I thought I'd post it!
It's about 11 minutes long (even though it's a bit shorter on this recording. The conductor (one of the students I travelled with) probably was a bit nervous, so the tempi were a bit fast. She did excellently though and I'm very grateful for all the time and care she gave to this piece. She was awesome to work together with.)
The instrumentation is what was available, i.e. the instruments needed for the Haydn symphony: Flute, 2 Oboes, Bassoon, 2 Horns and Strings. I crafted my piece in some aspects after this Haydn symphony too, for example by a frequent use of solo strings and a vague relationship to the Haydn subject "evening". The parallels to Haydn are negligible though.
Here's text I wrote for the program:
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The title "gerasterte Dämmerung" ("dusk in a grid") refers both to the technique of composition I used and to vague associations with evening or dusk. Dusk (Dämmerung) means here that there are varied degrees of "light", creating transitions from clear lines to blurred contours or obscurity. In order to put this idea into practice, a technique of using harmonic and rhythmical "grids" appeared suitable, which I had first explored in a piece of computer music.
These grids are defined sets of notes and rhythms that are used to approximate an independent, continuous musical line, so that the resulting music follows the general direction of the original line, but consists only of the notes that exist within the grid. This is much like creating a mosaic, where an image is represented by stones in a limited range of colours.
Similarly to the mosaic, where the number and size of different stones at your disposal determines how accurately and detailed you can depict something, the number of different notes in my grids determines how fine they are, and how accurately they can represent the underlying line. With a fine grid (for example all 12 notes of the octave) the music comes very close to the line, whereas a rough grid, consisting only of a few select notes, will change the contour of the line significantly. Like this, changing the fineness of a grid over a musical line will have the effect of either making the result very clear, or blurring it. The concept of rougher and finer grids also applies formally to the piece, where clear-cut blocks slowly turn into more flowing transitions, representing the slowly vanishing contours at dusk.
The line "behind the grid" winds through the whole piece, sometimes dividing into two or more lines for a while, sometimes ruptured by an abrupt change to a different block, but never stopping. As it moves through the various layered grids and is always represented by different sets of "mosaic stones" it constantly changes in appearance. My aim with this technique was to allow me to focus on wide musical gestures, like drawing music with a large paintbrush, while maintaining a strong structural foundation to keep the piece together.
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Here it is then, performed by the Berg Orchestra and Olivera Barac (conductor). I'll be happy about any criticism and suggestions, since I might be able to get another performance of this by another orchestra, for which I will revise the whole piece. (I already know of some things I will definitely change.)
gerasterte-Dämmerung.mp3