Beneath the surface
There can be a humorous quality
to Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen's music. The effects used can be amusing and the
instruments can be highly unorthodox. The form can be both simple and
surprising. But although the music may give a superficial impression of
merriment, one senses, even in the quirkiest works, that the amusement that
seasons the surface is connected with a deeper seriousness. The order of the
works recorded here permits us to move gradually down from the amusing surface
to the serious depths.
All as One is to be understood as ‘all
together' or ‘all with one voice'. But the instruction cannot - thank goodness
- be obeyed by the different individuals who make up this musical collectivity.
At least not with any happy result. The music is decidedly layered. An
intriguing, energetically ticking percussion introduces and is superseded by a
minimalistically shimmering string passage. The minimalist flickering moves
into the piano part and is transformed into a flowing motion, while the strings
plunge into relaxed, Romantic chord changes. The ticking rhythm returns, this
time accompanied by a nightingale's call and a plastic bucket instead of the
exotic gong of the beginning. Meanwhile the double-bass slinks along
contentedly beneath it all.
And so the layers of the music -
its individuals - continue to succeed one another. When the layers try to speak
with one voice they end up all babbling at once. When the cork pops from the
bottle, the most beautiful, chaotic coexistence pours forth. The musical
individuals may be altered along the way - may change their clothing. But their
coexistence is always pluralistic, interfertilizing - with the exception of the
forced, cramped coexistence with whose grotesque realization we are also
presented, fortunately interrupted by an indomitable ukulele, which emphasizes
the absurdity of the ambition of getting such different beings to act ‘all as
one'.
Like All as One, Tonkraftwerk is written for chamber
orchestra. But now the instruments work together to manifest one and the same
thing, a large, snorting piece of factory machinery which, as it overheats,
recalls Chaplin's film classic Modern Times. And there are wonderful details
to note along the way, with the piccolo's little crooked cogwheel that careers
on squeakily despite the breakdown as just one of them. According to the composer
himself, Tonkraftwerk is a piece of music that is
exposed in the same way as an electric power station or a chemical factory in
the landscape: "There are things that are certainly very hard to give a
beautiful appearance, so as a rule you don't bother. Instead they just stand
there in all their immodest nudity, which in a way is fascinating - they are
what they are. Here the concept of embarrassment doesn't exist".
The third work on the CD is a
chamber music piece for piano trio. In a sense the two movements can be
compared to character pieces. Each conveys one impression and one only. But
whereas the first movement is static, there is a development in the second
movement. The piano part in the first movement is an energetic perpetual-motion
machine whose uninterrupted up-and-down flow of semiquavers is counterpointed
by short, then gradually also longer phrases in the two strings, which because
of the frequent use of quartertone intonation give a plaintive impression. The
second movement too involves internal two-part motion in the piano texture,
which seems imitative, insistent and awkward in its stubborn
stamping-on-the-spot. But after a pause where only the harmonics of the strings
are heard, something happens. The stamping of the piano part moves to a
different level, is intensified and heated to a melting-point from which new
development can - perhaps? - be forged.
With its great, energetic, abrupt
leaps the first of the Zwei Zwölftontänze recalls the twelve-tone pieces
for piano of Arnold Schoenberg and other Central European modernists from the
beginning of the twentieth century. But how magnificently the second movement
lurches into swinging jazz and - in the end - actually into hectic
boogie-woogie! The movement has the title Die Nacht ist kommen, and indeed it is an amusing
thought, if probably quite unrealistic, that this is what Schoenberg sat down
at the piano and played after working hours. That the twelve-tone technique at
all events has meant quite a lot for Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen's development as a
composer is emphasized by the way twelve-tone rows in many works, including Tonkraftwerk, are a crucial part of the basic
musical material.
The title of Die
himmlischen Heerscharen - a very early work from 1996 - evokes winter,
Christmas, the firmament, angels, planets and infinity. It is celestial music.
The silent sounds of the spheres are conjured up. Stars and planets wink, each
in its own orbit. It is a flickering music of sonorities realized by bright
woodwinds (flute and clarinet), plucked strings (guitar and harpsichord),
celeste (very appropriately) as well as percussion instruments and two strings.
Along the way there is drama and development. But the overall impression is
static. In the end the music vanishes with the suddenness and speed of a
satellite.
Von
Schwelle zu Schwelle is a song cycle based on poems by Paul Celan
(1920-1970) and a sixteenth-century religious text by Peter Herbert, Die Nacht
ist kommen. The songs
are written for low mezzo-soprano and piano and make use of a remarkably
nuanced style of execution. At one end of the spectrum are passages that are to
be realized as "Sprechgesang". Other passages are marked "Singstimme mit Luft"
and are to be sung "with a colouring of air, but not as a whisper". Other
passages again are accompanied by the instruction "Throat". In these cases the
sound is mainly to be formed in the throat and larynx area. Cabaret singing is
the desired association. We further note effects that are achieved in the last
two songs by means of electronic amplification and treatment of the singing
voice. Finally, there are sections that are to be sung with an ordinary singing
voice. The nuanced execution once more evokes associations with Central European
expressionism and modernism, whose dodecaphonic techniques are an important
element in Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen's compositional arsenal.
Thomas
Michelsen, 2004