About my Symphony No. 1 ‘Kaleidoscopic’
When, as a boy of 11, 12, I fantasised about what it would be like if I became a composer later, I envisioned myself as a composer of symphonies – not as a composer of operas, or piano concertos or chamber music, no, symphonies I would write. Partly that had to do with my (by then) very great love for the great symphonies of masters like Haydn, Beethoven and Mahler, and that love for the symphonic repertoire has always remained. So it was obvious that one day I would start working on something like a First Symphony, and very early on I made my first attempt to do so. Already when I was 16, I made sketches for a symphony No. 1, but I still knew absolutely nothing about orchestration and the attempt got stuck in unfinished piano sketches. Two years later I made another attempt: this time I managed to orchestrate and complete the symphony, but the programmer who had commissioned the piece from me advised me against putting No. 1 after the title Symphony, as that might be a bit pretentious for an 18-year-old boy. Good advice in hindsight, as I now consider this Symphony (2000) a youthful work that sounded like a somewhat naive mix of Stravinsky, Morton Feldman and Tan Dun, three composers who greatly inspired me at the time. Then, over the years, I wrote several more pieces that could pass for a symphony – Morphic Waves, Boundless and maybe Rising Phenix – but none of them was labelled Symphony in the title. When programmer Floris Don asked me to write a substantial new orchestral work for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, I immediately thought of a symphony. I was now approaching forty and had already written quite a few orchestral works and it thus seemed a good time to start working on my ‘official’ Symphony No. 1.
Thus was born this four-movement work of about 40 minutes, my longest purely orchestral work to date. The symphony is a kind of summary or ‘kaleidoscope’ of all those musical interests and techniques that have occupied me over the past decade or so. So we hear my take on post-minimalism in Part I, echoes of early music in Part II, my fascination with speed and motoric, additive rhythmics in Part III and my love of slow-moving adagios (à la Sibelius or Mahler) in Part IV. Like many of my orchestral works, this symphony is characterised by great contrasts and a motley array of colours and expressions. Although the four movements seem very different, they nevertheless spring from the same seed. Thus, each movement begins with exactly the same harmonic state: the same initial chord, the same chord progression, in short, the same musical DNA from which a different organism emerges in each of the four movements.
Part I, Always with forward motion, begins mysteriously and quietly pulsating. A tapestry of overlapping layers of pulses unfolds. Initially, a long thin melody line in the violins seems to lead the music to a more melodic side, but soon the rhythmic, pulsing aspect takes over the music and the rhythmic drive gradually becomes stronger and more exhilarating. Towards the end of the movement, a processional-like passage with timpani pulse and blaring horns builds to a climax. Part II, Ayre, takes the listener into very different, much calmer waters. After a dreamy introduction, a lyrical, song-like melody sounds in the oboe against a harmonic background in the strings. While writing it, I had associations with old Elizabethan ayres (airs), like one John Dowland wrote. The melody constantly shifts colour and gradually becomes more erratic, intense and energetic to a point where the music briefly threatens to derail. Part III, Scherzo: Night Flight,is a highly energetic and rhythmically profiled movement, where I imagine a kind of ‘rollercoaster ride’ through the night over a bustling city, with music that is dark in tone but colourful and full of irregular time signatures and grotesque, carnival-like elements. Part IV, Landscape, is a very slow movement (tempo designation lentissimo) that begins very delicately and small, with a thin orchestral sound dominated by percussion (xylophone, marimba), piccolo, harp, piano and pizzicato violins. Gradually, the music becomes larger, more swelling and expansive to eventually evoke a very vast and majestic landscape, before thinning out again and returning to the small, fragile sound with which the movement also began. The symphony ends as it also began: with a single rarefied, high note D.
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