composer
“It's wonderful if there's a moment in a piece that can possibly undermine everything. Deathly serious with a wink.” Humour and irony are often components of Nas's compositions, like a ...
related works
La belle chocolatière : 2003 / Mayke Nas
Genre:
Chamber music
Subgenre:
Mixed ensemble (2-11 players)
Scoring:
fl ob cl g hp man perc vl vla vc cb
1 Oud-Hollandsche melodie en 2 vrije composities : zang, fluit, piano, 1949 / Hanna Beekhuis
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
medium fl pf
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
zang fl cl vn pf
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
sopr-m cl pf vl
composition
Musique qui sent la table et la pantoufle : for soprano and ensemble, 2004 / Mayke Nas
Other authors:
Debussy, Claude
(librettist)
Description:
Program note (English): Claude Debussy was not only a gifted composer, but also a merciless critic who wrote about his colleagues with razor-sharp wit. Like a true Frenchman, he was obsessed with food. In the reviews and articles he wrote under the pseudonym 'Monsieur Croche' he used many culinary analogies to give air to some of the displeasures he experienced in the concert-hall. After a concert that, to his taste, was ill-programmed for example, he wrote: "Je suis parti avant... On ne mange pas du rosbif après des petits fours" (I left before the end. One shouldn't eat roast beef
after sweets.). And after a new piece by Grieg "... cela s'étire un peu comme cette pâte de guimauve que dispensent les petites boutiques de foire, à laquelle se sont probablement suspendues les mains de marchand" (... it resembles the kind of liqourice they sell on funfairs, to which the fingers of the seller still seem to be sticking).
Musique qui sent la table et la pantoufle was written in the summer of 2004 for the French ensemble Aleph on one of these critical jottings by Debussy: "Musique qui sent la table et la pantoufle, ceci pris dans un sens spécial aux mécaniciens qui disent: 'Ça sent l'huile'." (Music redolent of the table and the slipper. This to be taken in a special sense from mechanics who, testing a badly assembled machine, say, 'It smells oily'). With this text Debussy was refering to music by composers who he
thought composed too much with their heads and too little with their hearts. - MAYKE NAS