Description

My composition Hämärän tanssi ("Dance of the Obscure") has been influenced by the attitude of early techno music: "Techno is everything you haven't imagined yet".

The piece includes some direct references to the origins of techno music, Detroit Techno, where one of the aims was to find a kind of hope through imagination amidst urban darkness and poverty - "a Salvation in a dystopian world". Similarly, in my own work, I have sought a kind of liberation through imagination.

True to its name, the piece contains some dance-like elements, but mainly with materials that are ill-suited for this purpose. The expressive field of the piece is formed, as it were, from this friction between expression and material. The use of live electronics supports this idea.

The title of the piece also refers to a kind of awakening of the underlying, lifeless material. This is achieved by emphasizing non-traditional methods of sound production, as well as a certain role for the performers, where musicians act more as controllers of sounds rather than active sound producers. The aim is to "make the obscure dance". I have explored similar expressive fields in several of my recent works, such as the orchestral piece "towards the extraordinary adventures of Baron Munchausen, premiered by the FRSO and Gustavo Gimeno in 2019.

The piece is dedicated to Sami Klemola and the Defunensemble. In the realization of the electronics, I have been assisted by my longtime collaborator Erkka Lempiäinen, as well as Timo Kurkikangas of the Defunensemble.

Matti Heininen [2024]

Instrumentation

fl, cl, vlc, pno, live electronics

Category

Chamber Works

Premiere

Defunensemble, Tampere Biennale, April 12, 2024, Tampere, Finland,

Commisioned by / dedications

Commissioned by Sami Klemola, Minna Leinonen, and Tampere Biennale, and dedicated to Sami and Defunsensemble

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Archive number

MF35705

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