contents
1. summary
2. listen
3. programme notes
4. interview
6. details
6. performances
summary
avatar (2022) is an orchestral work by Rozalie Hirs, commissioned by philharmonie zuidnederland. The music is dedicated to the memory of Louise Farrenc. The work is featured on Hirs’ portrait album Rosehart (2025) with orchestral works. Listen to Hirs’ avatar (2022) on Spotify or Youtube (listening link below).
listen
programme notes
Composed as an ode to French composer Louise Farrenc, avatar is a tender single movement, imagined as if Farrenc’s spirit were passing by. Written in homage to a beloved and admired colleague — one of the few recognised female composers of her era, who endured profound hardship — the piece grows from a fragment of one of her symphonies. The Classical chord sequence, emblematic of her time, becomes the seed of a new harmonic world.
In avatar, Hirs applies ring modulation — a technique borrowed from electronic music — to the source material, refracting the classical harmonies into unexpected territories. The modulations yield novel pitch material and extended progressions that sound at once natural and otherworldly, acoustic yet electronic. Although the piece might have been cast in microtones, Hirs chose conventional semitone notation, allowing an intuitive response from the orchestra. She asks performers to focus on tuning for resonance, maintaining soft dynamics to reveal delicate shifts of colour and intonation. The orchestration remains translucent, encouraging blending and sensitivity. Harmonies shimmer, hover, and dissolve, and the boundary between past and present blurs.
interview
Machiel Swillens: A new musical language
Rozalie Hirs composed avatar (2022) for philharmonie zuidnederland as a tribute to the 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc. The piece, written for orchestra, will have its world premiere on 4 and 5 November 2022 under the baton of chief conductor Duncan Ward. Violinist Machiel Swillens spoke with Hirs about her working process, the portrait of Bartók that hung in her childhood bedroom, women in art and music, her poetry, and, of course, avatar.
After an hour of conversation, Hirs asks with a smile, “So, how are you going to do this now?” I tell her I’ll type everything out first and then shape it into a story. “Ah, good,” she replies. “That’s exactly how I work: gather all the material first, then turn it into something beautiful.”
From the start, she has been open about her process, especially in relation to avatar. The commission asked her to respond to Farrenc’s Third Symphony. “I was happy with that,” she says. “That’s how our field works: you live in a tradition and you develop it further. But I am an innovator. I sometimes forget to mention that, but I really do work differently from other composers.”
After listening closely to Farrenc’s symphony, she selected eight measures—“a short, flowing passage I found beautiful”—and applied frequency modulation, a technique from electronic music. “I think of the music as a beam of light and pass it through a prism, breaking it into different colours. On a microscopic level, I let the chords split into individual tones.” This process generated the basic building blocks for avatar. “When I compose without a specific commission, I invent my own chords. There’s so much possible—it’s such a rich process. At my entrance exam for The Hague Conservatoire, they asked me what I wanted to learn. I said I wanted to develop a new, personal musical language. And that’s still what I do: for every piece I create a new vocabulary and grammar for that language.”
Hirs grew up surrounded by music. Her father took her to concerts and played records—especially Ravel, whose complete piano and orchestral works filled the house. At her best friend’s home, she encountered another world of music: “Her father was an engineer but also an excellent organist and pianist. We played around and under the grand piano, while a storm of repertoire swept over us. He played incredibly well!” She herself took piano lessons and fell in love with Bartók. “I played Gyermekeknek (‘For Children’) when I was very young. I felt taken seriously by this music—it wasn’t trivial. I felt a strong connection with Bartók, even idolised him. I had his picture on my wall; he has such a kind face.”
From an early age she felt she was an artist. “I realised: this is who I am. But in 1983, when I graduated from high school, it was the ‘no future’ era—crisis, high unemployment. My parents didn’t want me to become an artist.” She chose her other great love, science, and studied chemical engineering. Alongside her studies, she was active in music and poetry, giving her first poetry reading and singing in opera productions, a choir, and a pop band. After earning her Master of Science degree, she took a year to reflect. “I realised I wanted to try to enter the conservatoire.” She was admitted to study composition, first with Diderik Wagenaar, then for four more years with Louis Andriessen (“God rest his soul, the dear man”), and later three years in New York with Tristan Murail.
Like many women composers, Louise Farrenc faced more obstacles than her male colleagues. How does Hirs see this today?
“I’ve been lucky. It’s still a man’s world, of course, but my teachers treated me with respect. It was always about the work, not whether you were male or female. But yes, if you look at prizes—in literature or music—they still mostly go to men. The Matthijs Vermeulen Award, for example, has only gone to a woman once in fifty years. In literature prizes like the Libris or the P.C. Hooft, only about fifteen percent of winners are women. That’s not enough.”
She adds that patterns persist in subtler ways. “It’s a misconception that more women on juries automatically means more women win prizes. Women tend to empathise more. If a male jury member argues for a candidate, women may more easily agree than the other way around. In the end, another man wins. These patterns remain. I think it may take another two hundred years to fix that.”
Does she hear a difference between male and female composers?
“Yes, for me there is something distinctly different. I noticed this when teaching composition: there are far fewer women in previous generations, so female students have fewer role models. That often makes them naturally more innovative. And as we’ve seen, they often have to work harder for the same recognition.” For Hirs, research and innovation are essential to composing. “But it took me twenty years to realise that not everyone works that way.”
Hirs is also a poet, with collections published by Querido. Before avatar’s premiere, she will read a poem. “The big difference between poetry and music is that poetry uses an existing language—usually your mother tongue—with fixed words, syntax, and grammar. That means fewer possibilities than in music. In music, there are many more choices: counterpoint, harmony, style. In music, I first design the building blocks and grammar of a new language.”
What is the ideal way to listen to avatar?
“Listen however you like. Everyone does that differently. What’s beautiful about art, poetry, and music is that you can listen to adventurous things in a safe space, as part of a group. You might be sitting next to a friend, someone you love, and you listen together. You gain an expanded awareness, and you can reflect on your own perception. That’s enriching—that’s why we love art. It’s public, but also private: you have your own personal experience that teaches you something, maybe changes your perspective. It’s both individual and collective, and I think that’s beautiful. It’s like a conversation with a close friend: you learn something, you gain insight, you feel and think in new ways.
In avatar—at least in my interpretation—it’s about very soft chords that wave and breathe: the winds, the strings, with timpani as a heartbeat, and a bowed vibraphone as a kind of cantus firmus. It all passes by in six minutes. For some, it might create a sense of timelessness. For me, it’s as if the spirit of Louise Farrenc drifts past.”
(interview by Machiel Swillens, Klank Magazine, 2022)
details
commission
avatar (2022) by Rozalie Hirs was commissioned by philharmonie zuidnederland.
instrumentation
2 flute
2 oboe
2 clarinet
2 bassoon
2 French horn
2 trumpet
1 tuba
1 trombone
percussion 1: timpani
percussion 2: crotales, tubular bells
percussion 3: bowed vibraphone, tubular bells
string orchestra:
first violin (minimum 8)
second viool (minimum 6)
viola (minimum 4)
cello (minimum 4)
double bass (minimum 2)
duration
8′ ca.
publisher
The score of avatar (2022) can be purchased through her publisher Deuss Music.
performances
5 November 2022 , 20:15 CET, Muziekgebouw, Eindhoven, The Netherlands – philharmonie zuidnederland, Duncan Ward (conductor)
4 november 2022, 20:30 uur, Schouwburg, Concertzaal, Tilburg, The Netherlands – philharmonie zuidnederland, Duncan Ward (conductor) – wereldpremière