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- Niels Marthinsen
The Roads Round Pisa (2013)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
- 1(pic).1(ca).1.1/1000/mba/str 1.1.1.1.0
- 13 min
Programme Note
Commissioned by The Esbjerg Ensemble
Written with financial support from The Danish State Arts Foundation
The Roads Round Pisa (2013) for ten players is the last of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales.
My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - The Supper at Elsinore is a saxophone quartet, The Old Chevalier is for bass trombone and piano, The Monkey and The Deluge at Norderney are chamber orchestra work, The Poet and The Dreamers are trios - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motives from one piece appear in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations.
Karen Blixen's short story The Roads Round Pisa contains a series of nine tales in which a rather nonenthical character meets a procession of complex persons and situations and, finally, himself. These are tales of mirrors, misunderstandings, and marionettes – and is woven throughout with erotic images. The inset tales give clues to a chain of events that the reader at first finds incomprehensible. And so does the characters in the story - only when all the pieces of the puzzle have been revealed, do they realize the extent of their misunderstandings.
The Roads Round Pise isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - its emotionalism, dramatic construction, atmosphere, period and setting - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression... except one might say a musical puzzle must be put together in the right order for the true meaning of the work to appear.
The Roads Round Pisa is the last of my gothic tales – here much of the music from the six other compositions comes together with original music as a string of puppets, dancing a series of variations on a little tune that can be sung with this text: 'Den døde natur er altid trist at se' (dead nature is always sad to behold).
Written with financial support from The Danish State Arts Foundation
The Roads Round Pisa (2013) for ten players is the last of a series of seven compositions named after Karen Blixen's collection of short stories Seven Gothic Tales.
My musical gothic tales are written for very different ensembles - The Supper at Elsinore is a saxophone quartet, The Old Chevalier is for bass trombone and piano, The Monkey and The Deluge at Norderney are chamber orchestra work, The Poet and The Dreamers are trios - but they all share musical material in a criss-cross of contextual references reminiscent of Blixen's narrative complexity: Themes and motives from one piece appear in others in new and surprising shapes and combinations.
Karen Blixen's short story The Roads Round Pisa contains a series of nine tales in which a rather nonenthical character meets a procession of complex persons and situations and, finally, himself. These are tales of mirrors, misunderstandings, and marionettes – and is woven throughout with erotic images. The inset tales give clues to a chain of events that the reader at first finds incomprehensible. And so does the characters in the story - only when all the pieces of the puzzle have been revealed, do they realize the extent of their misunderstandings.
The Roads Round Pise isn't 'about' anything. The music is inspired by the artistic content of Blixen's short story - its emotionalism, dramatic construction, atmosphere, period and setting - but unfolds in time and musical space in ways that are completely independent of the story's narrative progression... except one might say a musical puzzle must be put together in the right order for the true meaning of the work to appear.
The Roads Round Pisa is the last of my gothic tales – here much of the music from the six other compositions comes together with original music as a string of puppets, dancing a series of variations on a little tune that can be sung with this text: 'Den døde natur er altid trist at se' (dead nature is always sad to behold).