Cmaj7 | Jonathan Harvey - Valley of Aosta (1988) @Cmaj7 | Uploaded January 2023 | Updated October 2024, 16 hours ago.
Composer: Jonathan Dean Harvey (May 3, 1939 – December 4, 2012)
Ensemble: Ensemble Musique Nouvelle conducted by Georges-Elie Octors
Score available from Faber Music: fabermusic.com/music/valley-of-aosta-870
00:00 Introduction - a sound mass slowly builds up into a unison calling theme
01:12 A menacing atmosphere undertoned by low dissonances
02:54 MIDI Sequence 1 - rapid flurries
04:24 A quirky dance behind a wild violin solo
05:01 The unison calling theme returns (notice how seamlessly it is passed between instruments)
06:29 MIDI Sequence 2 - a hypnotic sequence of chords
8:02 The theme is taken by the synthesizer with impertinent quarter-tone dissonances
09:04 MIDI Sequence 3 - "rapid succession of pitches whirl fragments from earlier in the piece along in a kind of spray"
11:01 A rather calmly quiet and mysterious section
12:44 A final burst of sound and color
Program Note
This work was commissioned by the Parisian group L'Iténaire. A French commission evokes certain cultural perspectives in an English composer's heart: a sense of living-in-colour which, at its best, dissolves subject-object duality as idea and colour unite, and thematicism melts into psychic flow...
The work responds to these cultural perspectives, but it drew on Turner rather than Monet or Cézanne. Turner's _Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm_ (1836) has no discernable figures or objects; it is an explosion of energy and diffracted light. Like it, my music is constantly shifting and has few firm outlines. Often the harmony is not stated by sustained lines but by short points of sound; it is atomised, pulverised, with light shining through.
The ensemble uses related colours which shift frequently: saxophone relates to trumpet in its high register, cor anglais in its low register; two harps (tuned a quarter-tone apart) relate to two synthesizers (also tuned a quarter-tone apart) in their 'plucked' timbres and so on.
There are three computer-driven sequences for the synthesizers. In the last of these the rapid succession of pitches whirl fragments from earlier in the piece along in a kind of spray, eventually dissolving all distinct sharp.
—Jonathan Harvey
How I make my videos: github.com/CMajSeven/WorkflowTemplate
Program I develop for this channel: github.com/edwardx999/ScoreProcessor
Composer: Jonathan Dean Harvey (May 3, 1939 – December 4, 2012)
Ensemble: Ensemble Musique Nouvelle conducted by Georges-Elie Octors
Score available from Faber Music: fabermusic.com/music/valley-of-aosta-870
00:00 Introduction - a sound mass slowly builds up into a unison calling theme
01:12 A menacing atmosphere undertoned by low dissonances
02:54 MIDI Sequence 1 - rapid flurries
04:24 A quirky dance behind a wild violin solo
05:01 The unison calling theme returns (notice how seamlessly it is passed between instruments)
06:29 MIDI Sequence 2 - a hypnotic sequence of chords
8:02 The theme is taken by the synthesizer with impertinent quarter-tone dissonances
09:04 MIDI Sequence 3 - "rapid succession of pitches whirl fragments from earlier in the piece along in a kind of spray"
11:01 A rather calmly quiet and mysterious section
12:44 A final burst of sound and color
Program Note
This work was commissioned by the Parisian group L'Iténaire. A French commission evokes certain cultural perspectives in an English composer's heart: a sense of living-in-colour which, at its best, dissolves subject-object duality as idea and colour unite, and thematicism melts into psychic flow...
The work responds to these cultural perspectives, but it drew on Turner rather than Monet or Cézanne. Turner's _Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm_ (1836) has no discernable figures or objects; it is an explosion of energy and diffracted light. Like it, my music is constantly shifting and has few firm outlines. Often the harmony is not stated by sustained lines but by short points of sound; it is atomised, pulverised, with light shining through.
The ensemble uses related colours which shift frequently: saxophone relates to trumpet in its high register, cor anglais in its low register; two harps (tuned a quarter-tone apart) relate to two synthesizers (also tuned a quarter-tone apart) in their 'plucked' timbres and so on.
There are three computer-driven sequences for the synthesizers. In the last of these the rapid succession of pitches whirl fragments from earlier in the piece along in a kind of spray, eventually dissolving all distinct sharp.
—Jonathan Harvey
How I make my videos: github.com/CMajSeven/WorkflowTemplate
Program I develop for this channel: github.com/edwardx999/ScoreProcessor
