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March 7, 2004.The Doelen
StringQuartet and Baritone Martijn Sanders perform
the second stringquartet Lied
der Schwermuth (Song of the heavy hearted) in the Doelen
in Rotterdam. The VPRO- radio is present to record the concert.
A radiobroadcast will take place end of May 2004.
March 4, 2004. The Doelen
StringQuartet and Baritone Martijn Sanders perform
the second stringquartet Lied
der Schwermuth (Song of the heavy hearted) in the Institût
Néerlandais (Dutch Institute) in Paris. The ensemble
also performs works by Parisian composer Henri Dutilleux who at 87 years old attends the concert. Responding to a remark
made about cultural differences between Top's and Dutilleux'
stringquartets he responds: "well, it's music from different
times."
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composers Henri Dutilleux, Edward Top and Hans
Koolmees in the Institût
Néerlandais, March 3 2004 |
November 2003.
The Schönberg
Ensemble conducte by Micha Hamel performs Top's Most
Beautiful Bird of Paradise. Location is Paradiso (!)
in Amsterdam and Musis Sacrum in Arnhem a day later. English
composer Jonathan Harvey is present at the concerts since
his Bird Concerto with Pianosong is being played. Harvey
and Top meet again two weeks later at a concert in the Warehouse
in London.
September 2003. Edward Top moves
to London to write music for films. The short film Bizarre lovestories:Thursday
from director Adrian Seah with music of Top, is programmed for the
Raindance East filmfestival
in London to be held in April 2004.
September 2003.
For his Stringquartet
no.1
Edward Top was awarded first prize in the 2003 Salvatore Martirano
Memorial Composition Award Competition at the University of
Illinois, USA.
Edward Top lecturing about his 1st Stringquartet
at the University of Illinois- september 23, 2003
The
work was performed by the UI Graduate String Quartet on wednesday,
September 24, 2003 at the Tyron Festival Theatre in the Krannert
Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University
of Illinois.
This composition is inspired by the haunting poetic beauty of panoramas
of sinful mankind depicted by Dutch artist Hiëronymus Bosch.
In his paintings about the Last Judgements, the depiction of Heaven
only takes about five percent of the paintings' total space, the
rest is left for Hell. In those 95 percent of space the artist has
total freedom to use his imagination to show the horrors of Hell.
The terrors of all sorts of disgusting creatures torturing the "fallen
men" are shown in an uncensored version to the audience. In
his painting The Garden of Delights (ca. 1500) he must have unconsciously
been so enraptured by the sensuous appeal of the flesh that the
images he coined tend to celebrate what they are meant to condemn.
It interests me how in general the evil in existence, the morbidity
and wickedness, speaks more to the human imagination than the good.
This stringquartet is composed without any before made plans about
structure, form, pitches or whatever parameter. It is written rücksichtslos
in an angry-chromatic style. With the sound as a result of mathematic
models and systems of Modernism between the ears, the monsters come
crawling through the pencil to the five lines on paper. Two years
before the final version this resulted in a twenty-minutes piece
without a head or tail (actually some of Bosch' monsters don't have
this either) with which I was not satisfied; it had no form and
so I thought it didn't make sense.
Later the piece was cut into short phrases and gestes which were
restructured and new material in the same style was added. The final
version of the quartet is built up by over thirty fragments of different
sizes (three seconds to half a minute) and characteristics although
most of them are agressive and angry characters. Duration of the
work is ca 16 minutes.
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At the general rehearsal
with the Grad Quartet- Krannert Center- University of Illinois,
september 23, 2003
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