Provinz Nordbrabant

Gemeente 's-Hertogenbosch

Herzogenbusch

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Niederlande

Herzogenbusch, Niederlande

November Music

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2023

2022

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David Dramm / Doris Hochscheid / Harald Austbø - Caffè Sospeso

Het LijfliedIn de familieopera Het Lijflied (6+) kom je in Ina’s lichaam terecht en ontdek je samen met haar het wonderbaarlijke klankuniversum dat haar orga...

Het Lijflied

Rozalie Hirs (*1965)
artemis, for soprano, ensemble and electronic sounds (2022)

Keren Motseri, soprano
Ensemble Ascolta

World Première, 15 October 2022, Donaueschinger Musiktage '22


Artemis is the god archetype who lives in nature, and expresses genderfluidity, for she is a female god with masculine traits like love for freedom, courage, independence, and autonomy. The singer Keren Motseri embodies Artemis, while Ensemble Ascolta, with its electric guitar, two percussionists, and piano, invokes a band-like quirkiness, with melodic and microtonal influences of the trumpet, trombone, and cello.

artemis (2022) alludes to the highly personal frequency-based (i.e. spectral) compositional technique developed by Hirs over the past twenty years or so. There are influences from the electronic domain in the development of the musical content for the score through calculation and development of frequencies and durations. Thus, the musical materials were developed by Hirs both for translation to the score, as well as for custom electronic sound synthesis. The musical materials, among other things, include frequency modulation, and ring modulation. The latter is an example of a psycho-acoustic phenomenon (i.e. "sum and difference tones") present when we perceive an interval or intervals of simultaneously sounding tones. Among the softwares Hirs used are OpenMusic for the development of materials and translation to the score, and SuperCollider for the sound synthesis.

The poetry for artemis was selected by the composer from her poetry book oneindige zin (infinite sense; Amsterdam: Singel Uitgeverijen|Uitgeverij Querido, 2021), specifically from the cycle magie van een mogelijk heden, that the poet also devised in parallel versions in two other languages, English and German, as presence of a possible magic, and magie der möglichen gegenwart respectively. The poetry cycle was written during the pandemic. For artemis Hirs chose eight poems from the German cycle [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11].

The poems magie der möglichen gegenwart start, autobiographically, with the struggle of being born. Then they deal with life and its possibilities, presents, losses, and a multitude of feelings. The vocal lines have been kept relatively simple, especially when compared to earlier vocal works by Hirs, yet in their seeming simplicity remind of her recent hand in hand (2020), commissioned by Kulturkreis für Neue Musik Heilbronn. The spoken passage, including a fully transcribed speech melody of the poet-composer, is reminiscent of her poetry and music cycle dreams of airs (2017/18), performed by the Spectra Ensemble, Belgium, and Athelas Sinfonietta, Denmark.

With special thanks to Stefan Wieczorek for his editorial comments on all poems, to Ira Wilhelm for her comments on [2], and to Christoph Hamann for his comments on [11] before its publication in the literary magazine die horen (Zeitschrift für Literatur, Kunst und Kritik; Band 286, 67. Jahrgang 2022. Wallstein Verlag) as a tribute to the late poet Barbara Köhler (1959-2021).

Ensemble Ascolta & Keren Motseri

Ensemble Ascolta & Keren Motseri: Artemis Hirs (+1 More)

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