Donemus Webshop — Scharf abreissen

Author(s):
Padding, Martijn (Composer)
Description:
Program note (English): For me, there are two great composers: Beethoven and Monk, leaving other composers behind at great distance. In Beethoven, I admire the way he can make a very modest motif into a masterly construction. For example the theme of the Fifth Symphony: tatatatáááá. What I admire in Monk is his timing. Being a psychotic, he was always under the influence of tranquillizers. He made very strange pauses in the harmonic-rhythmic discourse, just because he needed some time to think. Thus he undermined the feeling of harmonic-tonal rhythm. He also "un-tonalized" harmonies by combining them with dissonant seconds. He does not give those chords any credit at all; he keeps on badgering them. Both composers are present in my work 'Scharf abreissen' , which forms a trilogy with two other large-scale works: 'Jesu, erbarme Dich noch einmal' for choir and orchestra and 'Nicht eilen, nicht schleppen' for voice and ensemble. To me, the main point of attention in composing is the course of harmonic
relations. Before I start working, I want a fully elaborated harmonic structure of a piece. I must know the first and last chord. There must be a propulsion from one chord to another. Every pitch must have a necessity for sounding; every note must come from the harmonic causality. That is why Boulez' music does not interest me so much anymore, or the aesthetic fiddling with notes of the Berio- and Donatoni-epigones from Italy. Tone clouds, all right, but what exactly is happening? Or Cage's music; what is the difference if his pieces last for an hour or five minutes. For the last three years, I have been searching, while experimenting at the piano, for my own series of chords, in the twilight zone between diatonics (seven-tone scale) en chromaticism (twelve-tone scale). For the trilogy, I used a matrix of six six-voiced chords. This series of chords is a perfect workspace for me: I can "modulate" between these chords, also in various transpositions, without harming the voicing. The
voicing is always right as long as I don't use the same chord twice in a specific transposition, because that results in parallel movements of the voices. In 'Scharf abreissen', I tell three stories simultaneously. The main story is formed by chorales for two voices. I wrote twelve two-voiced chorales for this work, in the traditional note-against-note counterpoint: a series of intervals, harmonically speaking the simplest procedure but for unisono playing, performed solemnly and regularly by a very large orchestra. That was my first vision. The second story consists of references to hyper-romantic and hysteric music by Mahler and Brahms. The harmonies for this music are partly supplied by a matrix of six-part chords that I constructed for the trilogy. The third story consists of swinging structures reminiscent of Thelonious Monk, and references to rock music (especially in the sometimes-heavy percussion parts). - MARTIJN PADDING

Sheet Music
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Product	Description	Price/piece	Count
Score	Download to Newzik (A3), 104 pages	EUR 58.84
	Download as PDF (A3), 104 pages	EUR 70.60
	Hardcopy, normal size (A3), 104 pages	EUR 117.68
	Hardcopy, study size (A4), 104 pages	EUR 82.56