• Ole Buck
  • Flower Ornament Music (2002)

  • Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
  • 1(afl).1(ca).1(bcl).1/1.1.1.0/perc.vib.tbells/hp/pf/str(1.1.1.1.1)
  • 18 min

Programme Note

The piece brings Far Eastern inspiration to a mainly western-influenced musical idiom - partly directly through the title, which comes from the Sanskrit "Avatansa-ka" (garland flowers) and was translated into Chinese as "Hua-yan" (ornament flower) and later into Japanese as "Ke-gon" (flower ornament) and finally into English as "Flower Ornament Scripture"; and partly indirectly through the attempt to combine both in a unified musical expression.

"Flower" stands for immediate reality, because the function of flowers is to produce fruits, whose function is in turn to produce something new. Thus although they are superficially different, their power is the same.

"Ornament" stand for a single practice used to create a diversity of elements. Repetitions, permanently flowing.

"Music" stands for the direct specificity of imposing order on time. Even in a musical chaos some order prevails - thus by negating the boundary between inner and outer one can speak of an absorption, a fusion of "that" and "this".

It is also possible to view "Flower" and "Ornament" as identical, because there is no barrier between what one associates with concept and execution.

I wrote Flower Ornament Music with these factors in mind, as a musical landscape that goes on a journey while as a listener one must remain in the same place. Landscapes that travel must, like human beings who travel, be permanent, constant: like a flower ornament.

- Ole Buck


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