Programmatoelichting 'Contra tempus'

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name: nl Programmatoelichting 'Contra tempus'
headline: en Program notes 'Contra tempus'; nl Programmatoelichting 'Contra tempus'
creator: Elmer Schönberger
articleBody: en For: wind instruments, 2 percussionists, 4 pianos and 4 violas Duration: 18' 'Since 1963 I have been working with long uninterrupted sound continua, "chorales". This method of composing can be traced to a variety of influences. The internal dynamic of Stockhausen's Momente, nearly all of Stravinsky's works, pretonality'. Thus spoke the composer in his 'Inside report on developments since Ittrospezione II for orchestra', which formed a part of the notes on Contra Tempus published in the 'Muzikale en politieke commentaren en analyses bij een programma van een politiek demonstratief experimenteel concert' (Musical and political comments and analysis accompanying a program of a politically demonstrative, experimental concert). Not only Contra Tempus but works by Peter Schat and Misha Mengelberg were given their première at this 'historic' concert on 30 May 1968, at which time politics was 'the latest in public entertainment', as writer Harry Mulisch declared in a fictitious account of this event in his novel De ontdekking van de hemel (The discovery of heaven). The 'sound continua' of the composer's commentary are most evident in the final two of the work's five movements. Movement four consists of three sound blocks of changeable internal (exclusively internal) mobility; movement five, a slowly rising stream of viscid chords, is the most literally chorale-like in character. Andriessen's 'pretonality' plays both an implicit role in the choice of musical material (a series of twelve tones containing a major and a minor triad) and an explicit one in the third movement, borrowing from Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame (c. 1360). Machaut in this case represents music which contains tonal harmonies but without tonal functions. Contra Tempus is not only a statement 'against the time' of modernism that simply relegates the past to history. The title also refers to the duration of the separate movements (in the ratio 6 : 4 : 5 : 8 : 7), to 'stolen' time (what is shaved off one fragment is re-attached to another), to speeding up and slowing down and to the simultaneous combination of different tempi. Contra Tempus is written for what is now recognized as a typical Andriessen ensemble: six woodwinds (flutes and oboes), six brass (trumpets and trombones), two percussion, two pianos and two other keyboard instruments, and four violas. The five movements are played without interruption. Andriessen's final comment on the work is this: 'One composer watched over my shoulder during its composition, and he had the last word'. By way of an aesthetic credo Contra Tempus ends with the opening chord of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Elmer Schönberger
about: Contra tempus
Identifier: ark:/23946/bS5tku

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