By coincidence, this work is established: the Lenaerts family is not unknown in the musical world. Wouter Lenaerts , brother of Anneleen is a talented composer who now has successfully established his own symphony orchestra. Anneleen had me unofficially been polled once , if I would not be able to compose music for harp and clarinet , until my conversations with manager Dirk Coutigny led to the current result, a new work for harp and orchestra.
Etoiles came to me immediately as first working title because Anneleen simply is a rising musical star, its craftsmanship and musicality of her instrument is unmatched . Moreover, the image of the universe , the stars are somethingvery inspiratievol. In 1993, it led me to compose Zodiac , the work which was awarded the international prize for composition and Queen Elizabeth and erved as imposed violin concerto.
The musical content of Etoiles is not really a concerto , but at first I had a more suggestive piece of mind. Some time ago, a good friend, the incredibly talented French violinist Christophe Boulier attented me to a recording made by the Voyager in the universe and shows the sounds that produces our eart . I found this remarkable piece back on You Tube and used it as a base to start. Hence the subtitle is Chanson de la terre for the first part. A musical look at our planet from space.
The basis for this lies in the percussion either female choir: its format of is an almost exact reproduction of the recording by the Voyager. Around this I built multiple layers in the orchestra and harp. The orchestration I deliberately limited to multi-divided strings and two percussionists. In this way, the color of the harp solo comes more forward. The first part has thus become the most atmospheric part of this work.
Then it goes without interruption into Chanson de la lune , where I focused on all the splendor of the arpeggio played on the harp. No other instrument can so beautiful break chords like a harp. I developed for this kind of chord sequence, a chaconne which somewhat medieval influence.
After this interlude is continuous into the Valse d' Amour. Initially this part, or rather a verse of Plato, was the first premise of this work :
Αστερασ εισατηρεισ , αστερ εμοσ .
Ειτηε γενοιμεν ουρανοσ ,
" οσ πολλοισ ομμασιν εισ σε βλεπο .
Asteras eisathreis aster emos .
Eithe genoimen ouranos ,
' Os pollois ommasin requirement necessarily blepo .
Stare , my Star ,
Up to the stars ?
I wish I was the sky
Thus , all eyes
To throw at you. Cans
From Diogenes Laertius Book III, attributed to Plato ( 427-347 BC).
The project that this work preceded it was the creation of the film music that I composed for the Dutch - Moroccan feature film " Atlantic. " Produced by Augustus Films of Amsterdam's director Jan - Willem Van Ewijk , an epic film about the story of the young man Fettah who for quite a number of grounds, decides to coross the Ocean on a surf board. Fettah Lamara and Thekla Reuter (The American ) are the protagonists. The story is set in Essaouira, Morocco, the film comes into circulation in 2014.
For this project , I had 76 tracks outlined of which 12 were eventually retained. Many unused material was omitted because of the steady development of the film itself.
A track of them, number 22, originally contained the main theme for the film. It had the infinite ocean, expressed hope and melancholy, love , in short, it took more than three months before I was able to develop into what it had become the subject of an infinitely long drawn out melody in six eighth, cradling never good knowing where it would go. Eventually we decided to start the final assembly back from scratch and compose as if no sketches were made in advance.As a result, this beautiful theme was never used.
The original orchestration of this theme was for harp and strings, and so it finally ended as Valse d' Amour in Etoiles. Rightly seemed to me, because in that form in my opinion, it was the right evocation of the beautiful poem by Plato as a starting point and as the final part of this dreamy work Etoiles .
In the work, the harp part is composed optimally in a conventional manner, no special playing technique was used, I wanted to make the instrument sound at its best what will undoubtedly realized in the magic hands of Anneleen Lenaerts.