Exploring the new between time past and time present
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T.S. Elliott
Curating the concert
The following programs below were composed around a particular theme or special event in collaboration with the artistic directors of various concert halls or festivals. Some of which are co-productions and composition commissions. We hope to continue performing these productions in collaboration with festivals and concert halls, adapting them where necessary to current themes and innovative programming.
KOTTOS, the cry of the Earth.
‘Kottos’ is one of the three Hundred-Handed giants (Hecatoncheires) primordial sons of Ouranos, the Sky, and of Gaia, the Earth. Each had a hundred arms for wielding clouds and fifty heads for blustering winds (theullai). Their three companion brothers, the Cyclopes, were masters of thunder and lightning. They were the allies of Zeus in his fight against the Titans who were eventually defeated.
The creation myth of the battle of the Titans provides a topical metaphor for a program that gives a penetrating and gripping voice to the connection of man and nature as fundamentally intertwined forces.
Eos for cello solo - James Dillon
L’aube Assaillie for cello and electronics - Hèctor Parra
Nomos Alpha - Iannis Xenakis
Kottos for cello solo, Iannis Xenakis
Advaya for cello and electronics Jonathan Harvey
Performers
Arne Deforce: cello
Centre Pousseur: live-electronics
Duration: 100’ with pauze
The Three Stages of Life
In his Trilogia, i tre stadi dell'uomo, Giacinto Scelsi portrays the three stages of a human life, using every possible manifestation of tone and sound. From youthful and impetuous macho behaviour ending in drama (in the first movement, Triphon), to a gradual opening up and burgeoning (in the second movement, Dithome), to finally coming to rest in old age (Ygghur). The initial musical energy develops into melodic, controlled writing, before finally giving way to a fragile sense of acceptance. During the performance, the visual artist Tine Guns (B) illustrates Scelsi's versatile richness of sound inspired by Scelsi’s musical intentions. The result is a visual trip through the three stages of life: youth, adulthood and old day. A metamorphosis from still to moving and from figurative to abstract.'
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Trilogia, i tre stadi dell'uomo
I Triphon: Youth - Energy - Drama
II Dithome: Maturity - Energy - Thought
III Ygghur: Old age - Memories - Catharsis/Liberation
Performers
Arne Deforce: cello
Tine Guns: images
Duration: 60’
Xenakis, Saariaho, Cendo
Three generations of explorative music
Cellist Arne Deforce lets us plumb the depth of sound. From Xenakis's energetic sound structures, to Saariaho’s expansive sound waves, to the total immersion of Cendo’s Foris… a sound experience that really gets to you.
According to Pauline Oliveros, the godmother of ‘deep listening’, real listening isn’t something that happens passively in the ear; it is something that actively involves the whole body. Real listening is therefore a creative process. Hans Beckers fully understands this. He searches for a deeper sound experience by engaging all of the senses. When cellist Arne Deforce joins you in this sound, a wealth of auditory possibilities reveals itself, ranging from microscopic details to massive sound bursts.
Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
Nomos AlphaKaija Saariaho (1952)
Petals, for cello and electronicsRaphael Cendo (1975)
Foris, for cello and surround electronics
Performers
Arne Deforce: cello
Centre Henri Pousseur: live electronics
Duration: 45’
Arne Deforce
Hector Parra. ‘… limite les rêves au-delà’
An intergalactic journey in sound, for cello solo and live (surround) electronics
Inspired by the latest discoveries in astrophysics, Catalan composer Hèctor Parra wrote Arne Deforce an unforgettable piece of atmospheric cosmic music. Conceived as a psychoacoustic trip through a gigantic black hole, this work takes us beyond the limits of the known. On the other side of the black hole – like a perplexing paradise – lies the ungraspable world of the holographic universe. Together with sound designer Thomas Goepfer, Arne Deforce creates an extraordinary sound world that gauges the deepest spaces of the universe. From analogue to digital, brace yourself for a present-day Harmony of the Spheres!
Hèctor Parra (1976)
‘… limite les rêves au-delà’
Part One
Section 1 Life on earth and the emergence of self-awareness
Section 2 Hypernova, Shock Waves and Pulsars
Section 3 Rapid growth of the Black Hole
Part TwoSection 4 Collapse into the Bottomless Abyss.
Section 5 Passage to other universes. Nirvana in the Grand Fifth c-g
Section 6 Return to Earth in Holography
'I find the ideas, images and 'fantastic' hypotheses of contemporary astrophysics extraordinarily fascinating. They inspire me to make music at the 'speed of light' of thought, a contemporary music of the spheres where sound particles and sound waves resonate like a parallel universe with the atoms, galaxies, hypernovas, gravitational waves and massive black holes of the Cosmos.’
- Arne Deforce
Performers
Arne Deforce: cello
Thomas Goepfer (Grame-Lyon): sound design
Duration: 70’
Recital
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine
From the Depths, I Have Cried Out to You, O Lord
In the twentieth century, many composers have found in the cello a voice with which to give musical form to the deepest stirrings of the human soul. With beautiful, meditative and compelling melodies, they composed the intimate vox humana of prayer and supplication, comfort and sorrow, melancholy and resignation, longing and fulfillment. Psalms and religious verses are often sources of inspiration. From purification and contemplation, from devotion to ecstasy, the cello sings in purified melodies of the unspeakable power of the creative Spirit, connecting man and God, heaven and earth, nature and cosmos.
Akira Nishimura 1953
Threnody (1998)Giacinto Scelsi 1905-1988
Ave Maria (1958) (version vor cello solo)Volker David Kirchner 1942
Und Salomo sprach… (1987)Giacinto Scelsi
Pater noster (1958) (version vor cello solo)Arne Nordheim 1931-2010
Clamavi (1980)
(De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine)Giacinto Scelsi
Alleluia (1958) (version vor cello solo)John Tavener 1944-2013
Threnos (2004)Sven-Ingo Koch 1974
misterioso - als wäre nichts gewesen (2007)
Arne Deforce cello solo
Duration 60’
Phil Niblock
Movement of People Working
An audio visual experience
Harm
Poure
Feedcorn Ear
A trilogy of piece composed by Phil Niblock for Arne Deforce to be performed with the multi-projection of Phil’s films ‘Movement of People Working’
Other programing combinations with works of other composers are also possible.
Performers
Arne Deforce: cello
XX: amplification, electronics and video projection
Duration: 70’
Gabriel Paiuk
Sound Theory (The Clouds) 2021
An audiovisual performance at the intersection of music, cinematography, audio design and theatre infrastructure.
Composer Gabriel Paiuk is inspired by the development of sound film, or how image and sound synchronously play on our senses. How do we experience sound is the question on his mind. In this multimedia piece for cello, soundtrack, multiple speaker system and (live) video, he goes back to the origin of the Greek word Theôría (θεωρια): the root of both "theory" and "theater. Drawing on the greek term Theôría (θεωρια), Sound Theory (The Clouds) explores the way protocols of audiovisual staging inform the ways we believe in what we hear. Together with visual artist Sebastián Diaz Morales and cellist Arne Deforce, Paiuk performs a new version of Sound Theory (The Clouds), which premiered at Gaudeamus Music Week in 2021.
Listen the video below at a relatively low volume.
Following film scholar Morten Meldgaard's observation that "moving images only became cinema when they came into contact with architecture," Sound Theory (The Clouds) explores the theater as place and infrastructure, where the senses are synchronized and modulated. Gabriel Paiuk deconstructs the coupling of the auditory to the visual that is peculiar to the cinematic and musical spectacle. Simply put: why do we believe what we hear?
In both Cinema and Music, listening is informed by the spectatorial protocols of the theatre. As cinema scholar Morten Meldgaard stated “moving pictures only became cinema when it encountered architecture, [when] the movie-house [became] a spatio-temporal construct for the social venue of cinematic viewing”. Music, on the other hand, has been integrated with the theatre house since its fundamental affiliation with the beginnings of the opera.
Sound Theory (The Clouds) explores the theatre context as a fundamental infrastructure of staging that focuses and synchronizes the attention of spectators. In a world in which the manipulation of the senses via real-time communication and media technologies is ubiquitous, this project asks the question: how do the material qualities and infrastructures of audiovisual technologies inform our engagement with the world around us?
Performers
Gabriel Paiuk – Composition
Sebastián Diaz Morales – Visuals
Arne Deforce – Violoncello
Website on Sound Theory (The clouds) https://soundtheory.info/
Video performance ‘Dag in de Branding’
May 2022, 17:30 at Koorenhuis, Den Haag (NL).
Duration: 30’
(…)