None other than distinguished French conductor Stéphane Denève was at the helm of the Youth Orchestra Flanders’ 2019 summer project. After attending the world premiere of Jeroen D’hoe’s orchestral song cycle Songs for the Crossing in 2017, he commissioned D’hoe to compose a challenging overture for the Youth Orchestra Flanders. It became Myriad – which literally means “countless multitude” – a layered and dynamic opening piece and a musical metaphor for the promising future and countless possibilities of young twenty-somethings at the beginning of their lives.
D’hoe found his inspiration for Myriad in a quote from Michel de Montaigne. He recalled it after reading Pascal Mercier’s novel Night Train to Lisbon some ten years earlier: “We are all made up only of motley patches so loosely connected to each other that each is constantly fluttering as it pleases; therefore there are as many differences between us and ourselves as there are between us and others.” When he presented this quote to Denève during their first meeting, it turned out that he had a similar quote in mind, but from Steve Jobs: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow be connected in your future. You have to trust in something – your feelings, fate, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down and has made all the difference in my life.”
D’hoe could not wish for a better motto for a work composed specifically for young people, whose future is still completely open. Fundamental, then, is the optimistic energy the work exudes. The loose melodic ” fragments” and pizzicato themes – referring to the “dots” – are connected by chords that occasionally friction, but always from a natural resonance, without really clashing with each other. That positive shimmer is also created by what D’hoe calls a “polymetric texture”: “You experience different time signatures at the same time, without one of them dominating. In other words, you have to surrender to something you don’t really have control over, just like in life.”
D’hoe felt it was important to challenge the performers technically: “The metrical modulations in Myriad will take young musicians out of their comfort zone. There are several pendulum movements in it, which make sure you keep moving from the initial tempo into a new time measure, and back again. This “renewal of momentum” was inspired by an artistic research project on sound illusions that I conducted with musicologist Stephan Weytjens several years ago. I see it as a sound metaphor for ‘giving a new impulse’ to your hopes, to your dreams.”
[After Aurélie Walschaert | www.upbeat.be]
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