Michel van der Aa / Works / 

Here [enclosed]

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A black plexiglas cabin the size of a telephone booth is set up on stage as a dominant yet silent partner. What does this object mean? What secret does it contain? The conductor tentatively inspects the black box but the music from the chamber orchestra forbids him to reveal its contents. The visual revelation is delayed as long as the process of musical enclosure is not complete. Only at the end of the piece does the cabin become illuminated, revealing – as a deus ex machina – a female figure. The mystery has been exposed – but not solved.
In his Here trilogy, composer Van der Aa draws the listener into the musical exploration of the clash between the individual and his surroundings. His irrepressible fascination for theatrical and visual means is one recurring feature of the trilogy. A recognizable harmonic signature is evidence of his economical use of material. The harmonic DNA of the Here trilogy consists in each of the three sections of the same eleven chords, both in the orchestra and the soundtrack.

The opening work Here [enclosed] is, in its scoring for chamber orchestra and soundtrack, the most abstract of the triptych: the dramatic ‘ego’ is only visually present (in the cabin). While the individual and her surroundings encircle each other in Here [in circles] and attract and repel one another in Here [to be found], Here [enclosed] is entirely about an instrumental process of containment. That happens on various levels. The soundtrack hems in the orchestra by repeating sampled notes as chords in an ever-tightening texture. But the tension also tautens on a micro-level, in the approach to timbre and the development of individual instrumental lines – until the acoustic enclosure reaches a visual as well as musical climax with the disclosure of the cabin’s contents. The sound is audibly confined, and the individual is visibly imprisoned. Van der Aa resolves the resulting vacuum by turning the music inside out in the epilogue.

Foreshadowing the role of the soprano in Here [in circles] and Here [to be found], the first violin emerges from the muted string orchestra as an individual dramatic entity. The lone protagonist rises above the collective to which she once belonged, and wages war on the surging and increasingly threatening white noise emitted from the soundtrack.

The interaction between the live sounds (man) and the electronic sounds (machine) is consistently and noticeably marked by the sound of clicks and snipping that cut cruelly through the music. In this way Van der Aa reveals his compositional skeleton as in an X-ray, or as a blueprint that is permanently illuminated behind the music.
— Mischa Spel

Object used in ‘Here [enclosed]’

Reviews

Enclosed by the sound of noise

“Claustrophobia played a very intriguing role in the Matinee in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. It was the subject of the new composition by Michel van der Aa…while the phrases expand and the cracking and hissing gets louder, the chamber orchestra is gradually enclosed by noises on the soundtrack.
Van der Aa also shows a theatrical side. On stage is a plexiglass cabin raised like an upright coffin that reveals its contents at the end of the work. The ending is strong, as the solo violin, as if in fear of death, doesn’t dare to play any further and keeps on repeating the same note.”
— Ernst Vermeulen, NRC Handelsblad, 13 April 2004

A stone guest

“During ‘Here [enclosed]’ a black plexiglass monolith was placed on stage, as impeccable as Van der Aa’s music; a stone guest with which the composer referred to the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, and to the divided sense of loneliness which pervades his whole oeuvre.”
— Anthony Fiumara, Trouw, 13 April 2004

Open-minded minded sense of sound

“Striking clarity and structure…Here [enclosed] is a model of Van der Aa’s open-minded minded sense of sound.”
— Jos Ruiters, Noordhollands Dagblad, 13 april 2004

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Instrumentation

for chamber orchestra and soundtrack
2003

1 clarinet in B flat
1 bassoon
1 trumpet in C
1 tenor trombone

1 percussion player

strings (6,6,5,4,2)

Soundtrack (1 player)
(doubleA player software, from laptop)

Details

Duration

17′

First performance

30 March 2004
Budapest Spring festival, Budapest, Hungary

Commissioned by

onds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst, ZaterdagMatinee

Publisher

Boosey & Hawkes

Performances

Last performance


1 May 2014

Here [enclosed]

London Sinfonietta
Baldur Bronnimann, cond.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, United Kingdom

All performances of Here [enclosed]

Listen

Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, cond. Peter Eötvös