Compositions

Transits

for eight voices, bass flute and electronics (2018-19, 20')

first performance: By Silbersee: Viktoriia Vitrenko, Viola Cheung, Michaela Riener, Rianne Wilbers, Steven van Gils, Joost van Velzen, Arnout Lems, Maciej Straburzynski, Romain Bischoff (conductor), Helen Bledsoe (bassflute) and Wouter Snoei (electronics), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 28th 2019

Transit: the passage of goods or people; a change or transition; a route (www.thefreedictionary.com)
Transits, for eight voices, bass flute and electronics, was written for Silbersee, to be performed as a companion piece to Luigi Nono’s Das Atmende Klarsein.

The libretto for Transits was created by Arnold Marinissen on the basis of the following text sources:
* Text in italics: Continuity II (7/2016) by the American poet and music publicist Daniel Albertson. The six lines of the poem serve as a refrein, and form the core of the libretto.
* Regular text: responses to two questions which Arnold Marinissen posed and spread through an online request, relating to continuity and current change in the life of one's very best friend. The respondents recorded and sent their answers in their native language, in up to six words per answer.

In the libretto, one line is one response. The text is sung in the original languages, parts of it also appearing in English translation.

In Transits, the phenomenon of transit is taken to a personal level by looking into what moves between two people, and, indeed, what in the life of one's very best friend can be seen as a continuity, and what is currently subject to change.

For the electronics, Marinissen harks back to the venerable medium of the shortwave radio. Slow continuous panning through the various radio bands, as travelling without borders, was performed and recorded by the composer, representing another way of being in transit. The resulting sound files are utilized in their original form to create, through combining, cutting, filtering and balancing, the electronic music for Transits. Most specifically the sound files are routed in a variety of patterns between four loudspeakers - a third way of being in transit. This sound web surrounds and embeds the scattered recorded responses, the latter often encountering shortwave voices.

A special thanks goes to Daniel Albertson for the use of his wonderful poem, and to all the respondents for their dedication in answering the two questions.

Sidebar Title

This is the sidebar section of the main content area in the Theme. You can choose to display the sidebar on either the left, right-hand side of the main content area or at the bottom.