8 short songs on texts of North-American Indians. The character of the songs is very diverse: from odes to a seal to slanging matches and exorcist rituals.
performances by Cornelia Berger (voice) and Hans Roels (prepared piano) in Gent (B) & Brussels (B)
SAILING THE SEAS OF DOWN BELOW
In this piece I consider the player piano as an instrument different from the regular piano. The player piano is unique in its potential to produce huge polyphony (an orchestra of 88 keys), complex rhythms and superhuman speed. In "Sailing the Seas of Down Below", I exploit these possibilities to the extreme, which results in a very pianistic work: the limits of the player piano (and thus of the piano itself) are explored: thirteen-voice polyphony, combined decelerations and accelerations and fast keyboard runs that one hears as a glissando.
Sailing the Seas of Down Below consists out of two elements that seem contradictory at first: a tight melody in a steady rhythmic pattern (typically mechanical) and intertwining chromatic lines in a very free, improvisatory rhythm (typically human: with tempo changes and rubati). A machine such as the player piano is perfectly capable of solving this contradiction. In the final movement, the first few seconds of the piece are enlarged and presented as a slowly descending sound mass.
This piece was performed in Logos (Ghent (B), Automatic Music Festival 1995), in the Royal Music Conservatory of Ghent (Festival Week van de Hedendaagse Muziek, 1996), Brussels (Elzenhof, 1996), Antwerp (contemporary museum Muhka, 2001), Poland (Audio Art Festival, Krakov, 2002), Pierement Museum (Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2000), Muziekcentrum of Den Bosch (The Netherlands, 1999), the "Chants Mechaniques Festival" (Lille, France, 2002) and in the "Circolo de Bellas Artes" (Madrid, Spain, 2004).
'Sailing the seas of down below' is recorded on the CD "New Music for Player Piano" in de Logos-series Public Domain.
You can find a mp3 file of the piece here
You can find the midi-file of the piece here.
Phoenix was commissioned by the Walpurgis Music Theater (B). This theater asked 6 composers from Holland and Belgium to write a (short) piece of music theater on the theme of the bird which arises out of its own ashes, the Phoenix. "Phoenix" doesn't deal with this myth but with fire as an element of nature. On a text by the "first poet of Ireland" Amergin (before 700 A.D.), the singer sings and performs with imploring gestures as in a ritual piece of theatre.
performances by the Walpurgis ensemble conducted by Alain Franco in Amsterdam (Felix Meritis, NL), de Vooruit (Ghent, B), the CC St.-Niklaas (B),the Velinx (B), the CC Deurne (B) and the Limelight(Kortrijk, B).
Music as a landscape without a human logic, wherein fragments appear and disappear alternately. Nature as a ritual, slow and brutal. The still life of nature but also the anger because of the dying nature.
Played 13 times between 1997 and 2009 in Belgium by the Spectra-ensemble conducted by Filip Rathé and twice by the ensemble Champ d'Action, also performed in Denmark (Kopenhagen, 1999) and in Germany (Duisburg, 2000 and Koeln, 2002) by the same Spectra-ensemble.
Here you can find the mp3 file of the whole piece (file 9,2 MB)
Nowhere's Chaos was written for a concert centred around 'The State' (1972) by Louis Andriessen. The latter piece by the Dutch composer is a reflection on the relation between music and politics. My inspiration wasn't the music by Andriessen but the philosophical-utopian tradition which started with the ideal state as described by Plato. The largest part of these Utopia's (like Utopia - Th. More) depicts a rich, just but at the same time authoritarian society.
Only 'News from Nowhere' by William Morris is an exception because it is a part of the anarchist tradition. The text used in 'Nowhere's Chaos' is based on excerpts from this old (19th century) book which is still relevant to our times. In 'Nowhere's Chaos' fragments are also used from 'My journey with Aristotle to the anarchist utopia' by Graham Purchase, from press releases by the Zapatista's in Mexico and finally slogans used by Belgian action groups to defend the rights of refugees and illegal people are integrated in this piece.
performed 6 times during November Music 1998 by the November Music Orchestra, conducted by Fabrice Bollon, in 's Hertogenbosch, Tilburg en Maastricht (Holland), Antwerp en Ghent (Belgium) and Essen (Germany).
... VON HUNDERTEN, VON TAUSENDEN...
This piece, commissioned by the Belgian chamber orchestra Prima La Musica, was written for string orchestra (6 vl I, 6 vl II, 3 vla, 2 vcl, 1cb). The title is a description of the huge "sound wealth" which can be found in the borderland between music and sound. Melodies, rhythms and harmonies are rather suggested than clearly pronounced. The music is very fragile, it seems as if it can fall apart any moment.
performances in Holland and Belgium (Antwerp - Elisabethzaal) in 1999
Here you can find the complete score (pdf file, size:1,9 MB)
creation: july 2nd 2001 in the Musikhochschule of Koeln (D)
Run! is inspired by my image of music which is so in a hurry that it passes itself all the time, an image of music that flees away while stumbling but continuing its run. The piano plays an important role in this piece and should have a good repetition mechanism!
The tape consists of short and very fast fragments recorded on the automatic player-piano of the Logos Foundation, afterwards these fragments were edited in the Logos Studio.
Silent places -i.e. places where the level of the surrounding noise is low- are diminishing rapidly in Western Europe. These places can give the visitor rest and quiet but this peace is constantly endangered because these places are reserves in the middle of a busy and hasty society. The ambiguity of these 'Silence Reserves' is the central theme of this piece.
The tape consists of recorded, non-modified violin and viola sounds. The violin and viola were prepared and played in different ways, one of them was the gypsy technique which consists of pulling a thin string tied to the violin string.
performances in june 2001 in the Logos Tetrahedron (Ghent, B) and the Muhka museum (Antwerp, B)
This piece was written for a concert by the Belgian ensemble Champ d'Action, on the theme of Music & Architecture. The concert was organised on the occasion of the opening of a new building by the Belgian architect Stephane Beel.
The starting points of "How it takes place" are notions like "space, place and distance". These concepts are treated literally -as physically moving in space- and figuratively -as in the spoken language where you have expressions like "a close friend" or "to be distant to someone". The latter aspect is reflected in the relationships among the musicians on the stage. Therefor "How it takes place" can also be considered as music theatre. During the performance, the musicians act as in daily life: open windows, smoke cigarettes, turn the pages of the score of an other musician,…
Distance and space are also interpreted in a musical sense: large differences in dynamics, tempo and timbre give the listener the impression that the instruments are physically far away from each other. In short: the interaction between this physical, musical and social/emotional interpretation of distance is what the piece is all about.
The title "How it takes place" is extracted from the poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" of W.H. Auden, at its turn referring to "The Fall of Icarus" by Breughel. The spectator is drawn to the spatial effect of the composition: distant mountains, a boat sailing on the sea and a farmer working in the foreground. In the bottom right-hand corner -only a small detail- two legs of a drowning Icarus disappear in the sea. Apart from the references to death and sufferance, the painting and the poem give a good impression of the atmosphere in "How it takes place": some musicians play solo while others play together, smoke cigarettes or have already left the stage.
There is a recording of this piece on a CD with the Belgian magazine A+ (a magazine about architecture). This recording was made by the Flemish classical radio Klara on the première of the concert where the first (temporary) version of this piece was played. I changed the piece significantly afterwards.
for voice, viola, percussion and mixer
performances: on october 4,5 and 6 2002 in the NONA-theatre in Mechelen (B)
This piece was written for the commemoration of the concentration camp of Breendonk (B).
"Ohne Worte" is a piece with a lot of (soft) noise in which the music often disappears. The percussionist plays on a cardboard box, the singer produces a sound in between whistling and whispering and the mixer is not only used to regulate the dynamic level of the different instruments but also to generate noise. This noise of the mixer (by setting the gain at its loudest) is normaly seen as a disturbance but in this piece it is a autonomous instrument. The (almost unaudible) basis of the piece is the song "Pirate Jenny" of Kurt Weill.
Here is the score.
performances by Hans Roels and the Logos player piano in june 2003 (pianOH! festival - Logos, Ghent), october 2004 (M&M concert - Logos, Ghent) and december 2005 (Dénia, Spain - Centre Social)
This piece combines the possibilities of the player piano (controlled by a computer) and the prepared and the inside piano. While the automatic piano plays on the keys, a live performer plays pizzicati, glissandi and percussion-effects on the strings, uses two ebows and changes preparations in the piano.
This polyphonic work with different simultaneous tempi and timbres develops in a non-linear way, permanently balancing between standstill and progress.
'Dubbelstuk' is recorded on the CD "Machine Orchestra" in de Logos-series Public Domain.
here is the score (pdf file, size: 675 KB)
here is a mp3 file of the whole piece (size: 7,5 MB)
for voice, viola, steel brush and electronics
performed by the Black Jackets Company on the "Muziek in de Maak" (B) festival on may 4th 2004
In 2002 I wrote the piece "Ohne Worte I" to commemorate the concentration camp of Breendonk (B). My enthousiasm for the applied instrumentation (2 fixed musicians -voice and viola- and two flexible musicians -of which one has to be technically minded) encouraged me to write a second part. In both parts the words of these politically inspired pieces cannot be recognised. This second part is dedicated to the Israelian technician Mordechai Vanunu who revealed the existence of Israelian nuclear bombs. As a consequece, he was captured in 1986 in Rome by the secret police of Israel and sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment. In april 2004 he left jail. During the first years in jail he wrote the poem "I'm your spy". Fragments of this text are used in this piece
In this second part of Ohne Worte the singer and viola-player are now joined by a musician "playing" a steel brush (used normally to clean all kinds of material) and a fourth musician that controls the electronics. The movement of the steel brush on the surface produces sounds with an unpredictable timing (it is difficult to know exactly when a "hair" of the steel brush will "jump" and produce a sound) and dynamic curve. The electronics (made with the Reaktor software) apply both these characteristics to the voice. You can find a short description of the electronics here.
Here you can find a short description of the electronics and here is the score.
electro-acoustical piece
played on a concert in Logos - 14 july 2005 and on the Dias de musica electroacustica of the music conservatory of Seia (Portugal)
In 1998 I wrote a piece called "Nowhere's Chaos" which was performed several times at the November Music Festival in Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. As the recording of the piece wasn't very successful and a strange combination of instruments was used, I found this piece rather "useless" and started using the recording as raw material for all kinds of audio electronics (experimenting with the Reaktor software). In the original version "Nowhere's Chaos" texts from the Zapatista uprisings in Chiapas (Mexico) were used. "Colo" is dedicated to the village community of Colo(tenango) in Guatemala where 2 people where killed in March 2005 during protests against a freetrade agreement with the US. A few years ago I visited this village and the farmer organisation that organised the protests in March."
Here you can listen to a stereo version of this piece (the original version is 4 track)
live electronics and keyboard
played on a concert in Logos - 14 july 2005
In "Temperate Music" the music changes according to the season and the weather. I'm fond of the idea that some things are not always present but appear at one moment and then disappear again.
In "Temperate Music" a musician plays a keyboard and seven controllers. On the screen of the computer he can see the evolution of the piece and the scales (in quarter tones) that he can use. The resulting monophonic melody is processed in the computer resulting in a more or less polyphonic piece. The sound is mainly made using FM-synthesis (no samples) and partly also with "physical modelling" techniques.
A few hours before the performance the musician enters the characteristics about the season, wind strength and the temperature. The computation of these data results in new material that is necessary for the structure of the piece and for the realtime processing of the sound. After a first tryout of this piece (in Logos, july 2005) I realized that this basic computation took too much time in Reaktor (software). So now I have written this code in Python, here you can see this python-file which generates a list of data. During the live performance some parameters are free and can be used to improvise, others can't be changed because they are part of the (weather dependent) structure of the piece. In fact, "Temperate Music" is a combination of an electronic instrument and a piece (or improvisation structure) that both change according to the weather.
Logically there is no definitive version of Temperate Music, you can listen to one version (autumn, normal wind, rather cold) ("temperate632.mp3" file) and here is an other version (summer, normal wind, normal temperature)("temperate433.mp3" file).
I have made a demonstration of the live processing: here you can hear the basic input (that is played/improvised on the keyboard). This is what the monophonic melody becomes after being processed (and with the live controllers added).
performed on the 24th of february in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent (SMAK)
for violin, cello, clarinet, recorder, euphonium, accordion, percussion and live electronics (2 computers)
In "Different Ways" three spaces (rooms or halls) are used. Musicians move from one room to an other, causing a constant change of the instrumentation in every room. Whereas in the first hall there are microphones, in the other two there are speakers. The performed music in the first hall is used as the basic material for the live electronics of the two computers. The result is played in the other two halls. In this way the processed sound becomes a part of the instrumental ensemble in those two spaces. Although the music originates from the first room, the character of the music is entirely different in the other two rooms.
This piece is a experiment with polyphony, electronics and space. The cello for example, plays together with a vibraphone in the first hall; at the same time the processed cello sound is part of a trio with recorder, violin and electronics in the second hall; simultaneously the cello is playing a quartet with euphonium, accordion, clarinet and electronics in the third hall.
Here you can find a plan of the spatial design for this piece.
for piano and computer
performed in july 2006 by the Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt
In "Point Black" the pianist doesn't only play on the keys of the piano: he also plays on a cardboard box, he whistles and uses his voice. Some piano keys are prepared: rubber, bolts and other things are placed between the strings. The electronics (made in Reaktor) are mostly based on the granular synthesis of 3 very short samples. Apart from this I also made a audio effect that modifies the dynamics of the voice and box sounds.
Here you can find the score of this piece (although some remarks are still in Dutch...)
for automatic instruments and computer
performed in october 2006 in Logos
A piece in which 11 computer controlled automats are being played on a keyboard. Only the key chambers of the 3 organ automats are used. For every automat I programmed a different way of playing. Three very short parts (consisting mainly of a melody) were composed in advance. By chosing the repetitions and the order of these parts during the performance the piece gets its shape. "Slow Motion" is in fact a patch in Reaktor that enables a performer to improvse with 11 music instruments. What the individual automats play, can be made in advance, be generated by some (simpel melodic) algorithm or can be improvised on the keyboard. Therefor every performance sounds different (that's why the date is in the title).
The noise machines (like <PSCH>, <SPRINGERS>, <THUNDERWOOD>) give the performer the opportunity to play with different kinds of noise while the automatic harmonium enables the audience to hear very tiny differences in amplitude. These two characteristics are used a lot in "Slow Motion".
Here you can find a desciption of all the automatic instruments that were developed and built in Logos.
for 8, 12, 16 or 24 radio's and 1 or 2 optional instruments ad libitum
"Radio South" is a piece for 8, 12, 16 or 14 radios that can be performed by children or teenagers. I borrowed the idea to make a piece for radios from John Cage. Every performer has to memorize 2 places on his radio: 1 radio station (music or voice sounds) and 1 place inbetween 2 radio stations (all kinds of noises). The players are standing in the public.
Here is the score of the version for 12 radios and this is a recording of the same version.
for 4 instruments
"Threeway" is a polyphonic piece in which 3 main instruments play in a seperate tempo and a fourth follows and accompanies this trio. This piece wasn't written for 4 specific instruments, it has an abstract score that can be played by several instruments (with certain characteristcs). The first version was played in the Logos Foundation on a toy piano, a melodica and two synthesizers but f.e. a performance with xylophone, clarinet, cello and accordeon or mandolin, accordeon, bassrecorder and harmonium is also possible.
"Threeway" almost sounds as a soundscape with three clear and seperate voices that go their own way but -as if by accidence- fit together well.
Here is the score of this piece.
for midi-keyboard, computer and two quarter tone music automats
composed as a commission for vzw Musicon (Ghent)
In Soffitto a piano keyboard is connected to a computer that controls an automatic organ and an automatic xylophone. After experimenting with musical techniques, ornaments, chords and phrases that fit with these automatic instruments, Hans Roels developed algorithms (in Pure Data and Python) that change the input from the keyboard during the performance. Some details and structural elements were fixed more or less in advance, while others are totally 'open' and can be changed during the performance. Just as in live electronic music composition, improvisation and interpretation are almost inseparably connected.
You can find more information in the score and in the files (Pd-file: soffitto-1.pd, Python file: glisclus7.py, you should install Pure Data, Python and the Python external for Pd, you can find this external here).
This is the score.
Here is more information about the two music automats that were built by Godfried-Willem Raes.
for (amplified) string quartet
composed as a commission for the Spiegel Quartet
performed by the Spiegel Quartet on the 9th of october in de Singel - Antwerp (B)
Gort is the name of a town and river in Ireland. The region around Gort is known for its underground rivers. They disappear underground, emerge at the surface and sink underground once more in complex patterns. As a child I was fascinated by the appearance of these rivers in the middle of a field or some hundred meters before they poured in the sea.
The performance techniques used in 'Gort' produce by-sounds. Often the pitched sounds disappear in these by-sounds and a few moments later they emerge again. Whether 'undergroud' or 'overground' the music continues very intensily, very softly and full of energy. Normal bowing techniques almost aren't used in this piece.
Here is the score.
Between 2007 and 2010 Hans Roels has teached live electronic music to a group of teenagers and amateur musicians. Because there aren't many compositions that can be played in these lessons he started to compose a cycle of works. These pieces are mostly based on one specific technique from electronic music. They also want to demonstrate the diversity within live electronic music. The approach, style and peformance requirements differ a lot. Often the performers need to improvise.
The software that is used in these works is the free and open source program Pure Data running on Linux, Windows and Apple. Special hardware (like certain types of synthesizers or effect machines) is avoided.
You can find more information (scores, recordings, Pure Data files,...) about Patchwork on this page.
Just as "Threeway I" this composition is a polyphonic piece in which the parts have a very high degree of independence. Very occasionally there is some active interaction between the performers. In general every performer concentrates on what he is playing and perceives the other musicians as if they are 'in the background'. This piece wasn't written for 4 specific instruments, it has an abstract score that can be played by several instruments (with certain characteristcs).
A first version of "Threeway II" was performed by Hans Roels and Fabian Coomans at a demonstration on the festival Jazz and Sounds (february 2010 - Ghent - Belgium). Following performances were: postgraduate students of the conservatory of Ghent (february 2011) and students of the Music Department of York University in may 2011 on an evening concert of the conference 'Embodiment and Experiment'.
This is the score.
This work was written as a commission for the electric guitar quartet Zwerm .
This is the preliminary score (still without front page and general remarks) .