The inside front of the 'digipak' carrying the single CD - less
than 50 minutes in duration - containing Michel Van der Aa's
Here Trilogy has a quote:
Should I breathe the muddied night air?
Tear the light curve off its asymptote?
In geometry, an asymptote of a curve is a line where the distance
between the curve and the line approaches zero as each reaches
infinity; but can never touch it. This characterises one of
40 year-old Dutch composer, Van der Aa's, preoccupations: the
relationships between reality and appearance and the way in
which - musically - such perceived proximity can (must) be explored.
For the composer, music is more than organised or structured
sound. It's a form of expression - perhaps regardless of the
consequences. And in increasingly theatrical, dramatic and even
spectacular ways; though where the drama is always controlled
and rational.
Van der Aa's original training was as a recording engineer at
the Royal Conservatory in The Hague; an early influence was
Louis Andriessen. Add to this an emphasis on chords and rhythm
in his music and it comes as little surprise that it should
be almost impressionistic. If it were poetry, Imagist - blocks
of sound and voice, but certainly nothing like Messiaen. Subtle
shifts in tonality and a constant sense of progression from
one sure-footed musical evocation to another. This is carried
off with an uncanny sense that each is inevitable, the only
possible transition to be made.
The Here Trilogy shares some musical material with the
composer's chamber opera, One, which also concentrates
on a sole person's search for her self. In the present work
soprano Claron McFaddon strikes a subtle - if at times almost
strained - balance between Sprechgesang and purely lyrical
intonation of two short but intense poems by the composer, from
which the quotation comes. For all its basis in abstraction,
the work is also highly present and immediate.
Only semi-metaphorical is the topos of the branch that
snaps in the cold. To be heard repeatedly throughout the music
(indeed its sound is almost taken for a surface fault on the
CD: it isn't), its crisp, 'one-way' sound is intentionally symbolic
of alienation, detachment - derangement and even anger. If the
music makes any impact on you at all, that will surely be an
appreciation of how subtly and unobtrusively Van der Aa blends
such an extramusical idea with a highly tuneful - though neither
tonal nor melodic - musical landscape. And the drama, the tension
between what's obvious, visible and unambiguous, and what is
actually happening, never lets up. You hear it in McFaddon's
articulation, in the shifting palette of instrumental colours,
which is strong on strings, then woodwind, lastly brass with
little percussion. And when the CD has come to its calm, satisfying
end, you're aware that such tensions are rarely resolved; only
accommodated.
Each of the three parts of the trilogy is shot through with
the same 11 chords. Here [enclosed] is for chamber orchestra
and soundtrack which implies - though never exaggerates - musical
containment. Sound plays acoustically fencing-in roles. Here
[in circles] is the heart of the trilogy. It's fragile,
tactile, tentative yet not fragmented. Here [to be found]
is more than an epilogue, yet fulfils its function. By now the
urge both to break out of containment and to accept the discrepancies,
the dichotomies, between ego and world, between continuity and
event, between appearance and reality seems to be itself contained
in the music. At its very end there is a kind of rest, repose,
resolution. But it's one which, one knows, Van der Aa would
have us recognise and acknowledge was there all along.
The music is not timeless, floating, vapour-like - as early
Ligeti was - nor minimalist. That's one of its many strengths.
It's full of incident. It relies on incident. It is just that
the rationale for incidence is so concentrated and devoid of
spurious emotional overlay that the impact is considerable.
So, this is dense, conceptual, experimental and at times unnerving
music. The understanding, playing and projection of the Netherlands
Radio Chamber Orchestra under Eötvös and Siebens render
it entirely approachable and, after a couple of hearings, almost
familiar. For all the 'freeze' imagery, their interpretation
avoids sound-painting. For all the drama, and often verbal drama
too, they avoid histrionics or overt reference where those would
detract. The best image might perhaps be that the musicians
- in the only recording of this intriguing work - recreate everything
you expect to see in a cracked and tarnished mirror, exactly
as it is; but without ever having access either to what the
mirror originally reflected, or to its unbroken state. New music
at its impactful and memorable best.
Mark Sealey
Michel Van der Aa - Spaces
of Blank (Disquiet DQM01)
Claron McFaddon (soprano); 
