Output details

Colouring Sensation

This large chamber ensemble, commissioned by the International Society of Contemporary Music and IAMIC, and written specifically for the Nieuw Ensemble, explores a number of textural music processes centring around repetitive harmonic systems. In essence this piece is made from four harmonic regions, which are constantly transposed by a sequence of semitones. Texturally the work explores long sustained chords that are interrupted by melodic strands, derived from the pitch content of each sustained harmony. It also explores a reductive process – a primary emphasis in this piece is on temporal reduction – again influenced by Casswell’s research of kayagŭm sanjo whereby the lengthy sustained chords that open the piece, and which are interrupted by melodic articulations of the underpinning harmony, gradually become more fragmented as the piece progresses. However, a reductive process is also present in the melodic material that is threaded through the ensemble – the number of performers which share this melodic process, for example, is gradually reduced culminating in a solo flute line near the very end of the composition.

Colouring Sensation is a development from Caswell’s early award winning work Triplicity, though with an emphasis on temporal reduction and harmonic transposition more than melodic proliferation. However, the harmonies from which the piece is made represent the idea, as in Triplicity, of musical location and the interaction these locations have with each other through time. In this way it also relates to Wonderbaarlijke Wereld van de Stokkumse Bijen, though with less concern with a specific environment.