On Wednesday 14 April 2021 from 13:00 until 15:00 CET Rozalie Hirs presents New Spectralisms, a lecture during the series History of Contemporary Music Composition at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, The Netherlands. She speaks on Spectral, and post-Spectral music, in relationship to her own musical works. The location of the lecture is at Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire, Juliana van Stolberglaan 1, 2595 CA The Hague, The Netherlands. The above picture shows Zaha Hadid’s BACH Pavilion in 2010 at the Holland Festival (Gashouder, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam). The series is curated by Gabriel Paiuk.
The first hour of the lecture aims to give an overview of spectralisms, spectral techniques that have informed and innovated contemporary composition.
The second half of the lecture concentrates on spectralisms in the music of the author. Below is the playlist for the second half.
rozalie hirs: spectralisms in my music
Venus [morning star] (2010)
Spectral analysis, Risset/Shepard tone
In LA (2003; 2010 English version)
In LA (2003, Dutch version) was composed as a portrait of the composer Louis Andriessen and is dedicated to him. The text is based on an interview with Andriessen that Hirs conducted in 2003 inquiring after his first memories. In 2010 Hirs translated the piece into English.
In LA (2003, 2010) is inspired by the psychoacoustic ‘cocktail party effect’, which was taken as a metaphor for the act of remembering, for ‘hearing’ a particular stream of memories within a cacophony of competing memories during its emergence into consciousness.
article 7 [ways to climb a mountain] (2012)
article 7 [ways to climb a mountain] (2012) by Rozalie Hirs is a microtonal composition for bass clarinet and electronic glissandi, synthesized from pure sine waves, employing binaural beatings and ring modulation only. The instrumental lines are enveloped by, or cut through, the glissandi moving in several large waves.
roseherte (2008)
Ring modulation, curves, mathematical functions
roseherte (2008; rev. 2014) for symphony orchestra and electronic sounds
ways of space (2019)
Binaural beatings, mathematical functions, theoretical spectra, colours, architecture and music
