mondmuziek (wiebelige diva)

that's "wobbly diva" in English



Over de Dood en de Tijd (On Death and Time) : An Homage to Franz Schubert for electronic, voice, piano and organ (1980) 1st Movement - 00:00 2nd Movement - 07:49 3rd Movement - 20:29 Geertje Kuipers, contralto Jan Sprij, piano Huub ten Hacken, organ On Death and Time was commissioned by the NOS broadcasting organization. It is based on Schubert's song Der Tod und das Mädchen, an extremely short song, which deals with the age-old theme of Death seducing a young girl. A number of contrasts is immediately apparent in Schubert's song: the chorale-like serenity of the beginning and end as against the operatic middle section, the girl is young and pretty while Death is repulsively ugly, also the transition from Life to Death is represented by a 'pseudomodulation' from D minor to D major. Is this the fashionable romantic death-wish of the period, or did Schubert really see Death as a release from the troubles of Life? Or is it merely a technical device, a deliberate modernism, as contemporaries supposed? - Speculations. In On Death and Time these contrasts are enlarged by using the tool Time (chronological time) in order to transform Historical Time. Thus in the first movement (Life) use is made only of electronic (i.e. synthetic, therefore dead) sounds grouped according to the laws of tonality, although historically electronic music was the product of atonality. All sounds are electronically edited: here human action (Life) is electronic action (Death). The second movement (the seduction scene, the transition from Life to Death) uses musique concrète techniques: the transition from electronic music to live music. The sounds are isolated from the objects producing them (living musicians), therefore die, and are themselves turned into objects and come to life by means of electronic manipulation (cf. Pierre Schaeffer, L'Objet Sonore). Purely by means of Time the transition also takes place from tonality to atonality, and the editing is done by hand (scissors and adhesive tape): here human action is mechanical action. Live music, organ and live electronics, is used for the first time in the third movement (Death). The electronics are controlled by the sounds from the organ (the organist 'plays' the electronic equipment by playing the organ). The tonal structure of the organ sounds is destroyed by the electronics, and the result is an antitonality or non-tonality, although historically the organ is the product par excellence of modal or tonal music. By analogy with the original song there is as little development in Time in the third movement as in the first, this in contrast to the middle section. Consequently there is only a static situation, one that even has to do without the tension of tonal relationships, although the ,editing' here is in fact musical action (organplaying). Death: chronological time ceases, historical time (the regal as in Monteverdi's Orfeo) is destroyed by the jubilant crackling of the electronics (Death as Liberation, the Major Key) Gilius van Bergeijk is a Dutch composer. From 1966 to 1972 he studied the oboe and the alto saxophone at the Hague Conservatory; there he also studied composition with van Baaren and electronic music with Raaijmakers. In 1972 he began lecturing on electronic music at the Conservatory. He has also held various administrative positions in the field of Dutch music. In 1987 he was awarded the Ooyevaer Prize. Van Bergeijk has composed both instrumental and electronic music including works for ballet, film and theatre. His music, often tragic and bitter in its effect, often uses deconstructive procedures and he often selects well-known works for this treatment in order to make the process understandable to the listener. Demontage, for example, incorporates themes by Handel and Thelonious Monk, while Over de dood en de tijd is based on Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen. Instead of using modern digital techniques in his electronic pieces he restricts himself to analogue splicing methods. He does this out of a craftsmanlike conviction that the imperfection of manual work gives the music its necessary vitality.