composer
Ville Raasakka is a composer based in Helsinki, Finland. He works with ecology and environmental sounds. His compositional practice ranges from orchestral and chamber music to electronics, installation and performance ...
related works
Waves don't wash on dormant waters : for bass flute and electronics / Ville Raasakka
Genre:
Electronical music
Subgenre:
Flute with electronics
Scoring:
fl-b tape
Bicinia : 2-stemmig vrouwenkoor, opus 20, 1944 / Marius Flothuis
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Women; Vocal Ensemble (2-12); Women and instrument(s); Vocal Ensemble (2-12) and instrument(s); Variable instrumentation
Scoring:
sopr alt (2 instr ad lib.) / VK2 (2 instr ad lib.)
About leaves : for womens' choir and guitar ensemble, 1998, on three Welsh poems / Lowell Dijkstra
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Women and instrument(s)
Scoring:
VK3 guitar ensemble
Wijzang : voor sopr, alt en fluit / Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Vocal Ensemble (2-12) and instrument(s); Women and instrument(s)
Scoring:
sopr alt fl / VK2 fl
composition
Steam Engine : for soprano and baroque ensemble / Ville Raasakka
Description:
The mass production of steam engines has been marked as the beginning of climate change in environmental research. The steam engine not only operated with coal, but enabled the extensive mining of coal. The Atmospheric Engine, developed and patented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 in Cornwall was the first mass produced steam engine.
This composition is connected to this particular place and time. To the sounds produced by the Newcomen steam engine, and to a composer based in London in 1712, Georg Friedrich Händel.
The texts in the work are historical accounts on steam engines, coal mining and coal burning in Britain between 1661-1842. These include court hearings of workers in coal mines, reports of air quality in London and machine-romanticist poetry on steam engines.
I’ve used sound recordings of the historical steam engines (operating replicas) as a starting point for the composition. The orchestra reproduces the sounds of the steam engine with the baroque instruments. During the process I analyzed closely the vocal works written by Händel during the decade 1710.
Olga Heikkilä, soprano and commissioner of this work, recorded numerous readings of the texts, and the recordings, our workshops and Olga’s voice form the basis for the vocal expression of this work. The resulting work is a hybrid of instrumental concrete music and dramatic baroque cantata. The sopranos expression ranges from singing to sprechgesang, and from a human narrator to a living, breathing steam engine.
Ville Raasakka