Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Henrik Hellstenius
Like objects in a dark room (2007)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
Music moves in time, like a landscape passing while driving. Parts of the landscape appears up front, passes by and disappears, while new things appears in front. Sometimes one moves slowly through the landscape sometimes fast. As spectator one can change between focusing on several of the objects in the landscape passing by, or just one object. One can return to a place which already has been passed. Returning one experiences the place differently, because this time one has seen more of the place´s surroundings. Seen what came before and after the place.
Like with the passing landscape, music always exists in a ”before”, ”now” and ”after”. Past, present and future. Music can not be seen or read in different orders as you can with a picture or a text. Music is tied to it´s own flow in time, from something to something else. But it can pretend to create a place or a room and not events in time. It can dwell on something, insist on something and not move away from this. Music can attempt to create in the listener an experience of objects moving circular in a room, rather than the music being a linear journey. This is more or less how I thought when I wrote LIKE OBJECTS IN A DARK ROOM.
I wanted to present a certain amount of musical objects; a pulse played by percussion, some oblique brass chords, an intense shimmering in the strings, a tipping melody played by winds, piano and harp which goes thru a small transformation every time it returns, rhythmical breathing in the instruments. These are all pieces reoccurring in the music. The pieces are never totally similar on their return, they change both in colour and shape. They rotate around and in relationship with each other.
The chosen objects are both mine and quotations from other composers I hold in high regard. So the objects do not pretend to be all original. It is the circulation that is the point more than the objects themselves. Ideally this piece should be played in the dark with the audience surrounded by the orchestra, giving the listener a real experience of a dark room with moving objects on all sides. If this is not possible, the listener can always shut their eyes and pretend that the music defines a place where musical phenomenons arise and disappear, rather than a stretch of time.