Arnold Marinissen: Simone Weil-cyclus

Arnold Marinissen wrote his seven-part Simone Weil cycle between 2022 and 2025. All the compositions are based on texts by the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil (1909-1943), who was preoccupied with dilemmas, particularly the inhumane nature of factory workers in the early twentieth century. To gain deep insight into this, she worked as a factory worker in the 1930s. She wrote extensively about her experiences, reflections, and visions of the future surrounding factory work in letters, essays, and correspondence with factory directors. Her uncompromising dedication severely impacted her health. During World War II, she died at the age of thirty-four of heart failure, apparently related to a self-imposed starvation regime.

The cycle’s opening work, La condition ouvrière, was written for the American Ox and Lamb Percussion Publications. Three of the works, “Des bruits qui ne parlent pas,” “Un temps inhabitable,” and “La racine du mal,” were made possible thanks to a grant from the Performing Arts Fund NL. Marinissen wrote the final organ work, “Kairé,” commissioned by the Orgelpark.

The concert opens with a tape composition, Van Doorne’s Audio Factory, created exclusively with field recordings from the DAF truck factory, made by Arnold Marinissen. The work thus sets the tone for the cycle.

La condition ouvrière, for solo percussion, revolves around actual factory sounds and rhythms. The ‘instruments’ also come from the factory and workshop: a saw, rulers, threaded rod, hammer, thimbles, pots and bottles, sandpaper, whetstones, metal pipes and plates, a wooden crate, and a cardboard box. The work demands dedication, endurance, and precision, balancing on the intersection of humanity and mechanics.

In La racine du mal, for bass flute and sound tracks, Weil argues that when people assume the role of things, and things the role of people, this is the role of all evil. Factory workers repeat only five or six actions; yet they must remain alert, always prepared for the unexpected. Interruptions, which lead to beauty and a sense of slowness, are absent. The unbroken cadence, which runs counter to rhythm, like the tick-tock of a clock, makes the factory worker indifferent and cruel. After a day at the factory, they have only one thought: it took a long time…

The musical material of Des bruits qui ne parlent pas, in a version for barrel organ, percussion, and soundtracks, is based on the rhythm and melody of Weil’s text; on the other hand, it follows the soulless motoric flow of factory work. The barrel organ drags the percussion along; the percussion speaks to the barrel organ. As with La condition ouvrière, the work unfolds at the intersection of humanity and mechanics.

In the text of Un temps inhabitable, for vibraphone and soundtracks, Weil reflects on time, rhythm, and the balance between variety and monotony as the key factors in the factory worker’s dilemma. She argues that in all things that have beauty and value, this balance between variety and monotony is essential. When this balance is lacking, things go wrong: the “impossibility of looking ahead” and “moments that follow one another like the tick-tock of a clock” make time “uninhabitable, suffocating.”

J’aime encore mieux le silence for three voices is based on a personal note in a letter Weil wrote in January 1936 to Boris Souvarine, who shared her activist interests but with whom she also had a close friendship, and who was then going through a personal crisis. Weil begs Souvarine for a few words about the essential things that preoccupy him. She writes: “Nothing embitters me more than receiving letters that leave you with an uncertainty like silence. Then I prefer silence.”

The new composition Kairé, which concludes the cycle, is a work for organ and sound tracks in four movements. In it, Simone Weil, in correspondence with a younger friend, Simone Gibert, shares her thoughts on the role of thought in mechanical work, the search for stimuli, and the dedication to action in the realities of everyday life. The work will be premiered in this concert.

Program:

1 Van Doorne’s Audio Fabriek (2025, 10′), for soundtracks, premiere

2 La condition ouvrière (2022, 6′), for solo percussion

3 La racine du mal (2023, 8′), for bass flute and soundtracks, premiere

4 Des bruits qui ne parlent pas (2023-25, 8′), version for barrel organ, percussion and soundtracks

5 Un temps inhabitable (2023, 6′), for vibraphone and sound tracks

6 J’aime encore mieux le silence (2023, 3′), for three voices, premiere

7 Kairé (2025, 20′), for organ and soundtracks, premiere

           I Pensez, c’est aller moins vite

           II Ce n’est pas comme à l’université

           III Parlons de vous

           IV Saluez fox montagnes pour moi

Performers

Dorien Schouten, organ (7)

Agathe Labadie, soprano (6)

Levy Pletting, mezzo-soprano (6)

Trevor Brown, tenor (6)

Raymond Honing, bass flute (2)

Joey Marijs, percussion (5)

Arnold Marinissen, percussion (4, 5)