Hirs’ work is informed by the exploration of the intersection of art and science. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University, where she studied as a Fulbright Fellow, and a Master of Music from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Before pursuing her music career, she earned a Master of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Twente. These diverse academic paths have shaped her approach to poetry and composition, where she draws upon principles of acoustics, neurolinguistics, psychoacoustics, and mathematics to develop her unique sound language.
writings on music and poetry
music research, software
• R. Hirs, ‘Spectralisms in the Music of Rozalie Hirs and Their Points of Departure in Research and Innovation’, Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music (book), Oxford University Press, England, UK, 2025. pp 877-894 (chapter 41). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190633547.013.62.
• R. Hirs, ‘Spectralisms in the Music of Rozalie Hirs and Their Points of Departure in Research and Innovation’, Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music (online), Oxford University Press, England, UK, 2023. Chapter 41.
• R. Hirs, ‘Zeitgenössische Kompositionstechniken und OpenMusic: Murail’s Le Lac’ (vert. L. Haselböck), Klangperspektiven (herausgegeben von Lukas Haselböck), Wolke Verlag, Hofheim, Germany, 2011. pp 119–164. ISBN 978-393-600-081-8.
• R. Hirs, B. Gilmore, eds., Contemporary Compositional Techniques and OpenMusic, Collection Musique/Sciences, Paris: Editions Delatour/IRCAM, France, 2009. ISBN 978-275-210-080-1.
• R. Hirs, ‘Frequency-based compositional techniques in the music of Tristan Murail’, Contemporary Compositional Techniques and OpenMusic, Collection Musique/Sciences, Paris: Editions Delatour/IRCAM, France, 2009. pp 93–196. ISBN 978-275-210-080-1.
• R. Hirs, ‘On Murail’s Le lac’, D.M.A. dissertation, Columbia University/New York, Ann Arbor: ProQuest, United States, 2007; Contemporary Compositional Techniques and OpenMusic, Collection Musique/Sciences, Paris: Editions Delatour/IRCAM, France, 2009. pp 45–89. ISBN 978-275-210-080-1.
• R. Hirs. Componist aan het woord: Tekst en muziek in het oeuvre van Olivier Messiaen. Preludium, Magazine van het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. February 2008. pp.26-28.
columns on music
During the 2013/14 season Rozalie Hirs was columnist for Preludium, the programme book of Concertgebouw and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
• R. Hirs, ‘Zo ben je, zo ben je niet’, Preludium Vol.72 issue 10, Amsterdam, June 2014.
• R. Hirs, ‘Longkruid’, Preludium Vol.72 issue 8, Amsterdam, April 2014.
• R. Hirs, ‘Spiegelen’, Preludium Vol.72 issue 7, Amsterdam, March 2014.
• R. Hirs, ‘Pingpongballen’, Preludium Vol.72 issue 4, Amsterdam, December 2013.
• R. Hirs, ‘Luisteren’, Preludium Vol.72 issue 2, Amsterdam, October 2013.
essays on poetry
• R. Hirs, ‘Barnas nachtboot op weg naar het licht’ (introduction to the poetry of Maria Barnas), Maria Barnas: Nightboat and other poems (Engelse vertaling: Donald Gardner), Shearsman, 2025;
• R. Hirs, ‘Betekenisritme en spraakmelodie – hoe de muziek in mijn poëzie verschijnt’, Dossier Poëzie en Muziek, Poëziekrant 2023-6 (pp. 62-66), december 2023;
• R. Hirs, ‘Het trauma van de moeder van de moeder’ (review about Maria Barnas’ Diamant zonder r, Uitgeverij Van Oorschot, 2022), NRC Boeken (krant), Amsterdam, 1 juli 2022; ‘In deze bundel klinkt één grote schreeuw in de vorm van een dodenmars’, NRC Boeken (online), 30 juni 2022.
• R. Hirs, ‘In Memoriam Ilse Starkenburg (1963-2019)’, Awater 2020/1, Poëzieclub, Amsterdam, januari 2020; Paukeslag, Poëziecentrum, Gent, april 2022.
• R. Hirs, ‘Wir sind Sprachwesen’ (nawoord over meertaligheid en eigen werk), gestammelte werke, kookbooks, Berlijn, Duitsland, oktober 2017.
Contemporary Compositional Techniques and OpenMusic
the book
The first part of this book contains an interview with Tristan Murail and three essays on musical works of Claude Vivier (Lonely child, 1980), Gérard Grisey (Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, 1997–98), and Tristan Murail (Le lac, 2001) by Bob Gilmore, Jean-Luc Hervé, and Rozalie Hirs. The authors provide detailed analyses of these works, focusing on the frequency-based techniques and compositional processes employed by the composers.
The second part of the book originated in OpenMusic and Contemporary Compositional Techniques, a series of lectures and workshops given by Rozalie Hirs and guest professors Tristan Murail, Mikhail Malt, Benjamin Thigpen, Marco Stroppa, and Niels Bogaards at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam during the 2005/06 academic year. The series was initiated by the Nieuw Ensemble and its artistic director, Joël Bons, as part of the annual Componistenpracticum. The Nieuw Ensemble and conductor Lucas Vis rehearsed and performed new pieces written by an international group of composition students from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire in the Netherlands. In turn, the students documented their creative process in the seven essays included in this volume. An extensive essay on Tristan Murail’s compositional ideas and frequency-based techniques originated in the lecture series given by Rozalie Hirs. It provides the most detailed discussion of Murail’s work available in English. Press release [PDF]
The two articles by Rozalie Hirs were written with financial support by Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds (2003-05) and Amsterdam School of the Arts (2006-07). The article On Murial’s Le lac was part of her D.M.A. dissertation at Columbia University (2007).
From 14 June 2023 onwards, all articles by Hirs have been available as free downloads [PDF] from the Academia website. Happy reading!
the software
All OM patches discussed in the book were programmed in OpenMusic. All OM patches illuminating the ideas and techniques of Tristan Murail employ the OMTristan library. The original OMTristan library was developed by Tristan Murail. Rozalie Hirs merged OMTristan with the original Esquisse library; the menu and object names were unified and translated into English; those characters that are forbidden or active in CommonLISP were removed from the object names. It was upgraded to versions 3.0 and 3.1 for use with higher versions of OM and MacOsX by Jean Bresson, and further debugged into version 3.2 by António Florença for use with the latest OpenMusic software. In the summer of 2016 Tristan Murail and Rozalie Hirs added some new functions to the OMTristan 3.3. In the Spring of 2018 Jean Bresson updated the library to OMTristan 3.4 in order to make it compatible with OpenMusic 6.13.
current version of OpenMusic 7.4 & OMTristan 3.5
Currently, I am using OpenMusic 7.7 (on MacOS), which is compatible with the OMTristan 3.5 library. Regarding microtonal playback with FluidSynth, follow the instructions towards installation on Mac and Linux here. Enjoy your work with OMTristan 3.5!
Rozalie Hirs, Amsterdam, 15 December 2025
previous OMTristan libraries
OMTristan 2.0 for Mac PPC and pre-Intel versions of OM
OMTristan 3.0 for Mac Intel and PPC and OM 6.1.2-6.5
OMTristan 3.1 for higher versions of OM and MacOsX (14 February 2014)
OMTristan 3.2 for the current version of OpenMusic (7 October 2015)
OMTristan 3.3 with added functionalities, for the current version of OpenMusic 6.10-6.12 (19 August 2016)
OMTristan 3.4 compatible with OpenMusic 6.13-7.4 (7 April 2018)
OMTristan 3.5 compatible with the current version of OpenMusic (6 May 2022)
N.B. As a general rule keep in mind that OMTristan works best in OpenMusic on its own, i.e. try to avoid loading too many other libraries while working with OMTristan.