During Tijds des Toets Festival in Amsterdam Janneke van Prooien wil perform Genieting VIII for violin solo by Willem Boogman

Willem Boogman – Genieting VIII for violin solo (2025)

I selected about forty melodies from traditional Turkish music, folk music from the Balkan countries, classical Arabic-Andalusian music and flamenco. The connecting link is a system of pitch intervals, the Turkish mode Hicaz, which is related to the Arabic Hijas and the Western Phrygian mode. This mode is characterized by the pitch distance of an augmented second.

I used the melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and metric contours of the music I refer to as building blocks for new musical forms. In my music, musical forms rarely retain their identity: they are recognizable, but also distinctly fluid. They appear, like clouds in the sky, constantly changing shape in an ever-changing light, evaporating and penetrating each other, taking on each other’s properties.

With the transformations to which I subject them, I connect with the vision of the French-American composer Edgar Varèse: “Music, as I see it, consists of the movement of sound masses, of shifting levels (…) When these sound masses collide, it will seem as if they penetrate each other or repel each other. Some transmutations that occur on one level are projected onto other levels, which move at different speeds and at different angles. (…) The work will form a single melodic whole in its entirety. The entire work will flow like a river flows.”

Violinist Janneke van Prooijen and I found it a challenge to take the music and ideas of Edgar Varèse as one of the starting points for Genieting VIII. Especially since he is best known for his music for (brass) winds and percussion.

Genieting VIII is dedicated to Janneke van Prooijen.