Hiisi

by Tomi Räisänen

for bass clarinet, cello and piano

Description

The ancient Finnish word Hiisi has originally meant a holy place, the burial site of the ancestors in pre-Christian Finland. Hiisi was also understood to be a spiritual entity or a fusion of the souls of the dead people. In this work, the three instruments are also, in a way, fused into one another; they often play the same pitches in a more or less narrow range. Here and there, they try to break this unity. However, like in a magnetic way, the instruments find themselves again close to each other. Later, in medieval Christian times, the clerics wanted to give Hiisi a more sinister nature to keep the people away from the pagan places of worship. The word started to mean all kinds of malicious and horrifying creatures that could change their form. Hiisi, once a holy place of worship, was transformed into something opposite; ”Painu Hiiteen!” (Go to Hell!). Similarly, the dark sound world of this work experiences a metamorphosis from the clear pitch into noise.

Tomi Räisänen, 2012

Instrumentation

bcl, vlc, pno

Category

Chamber Works

Premiere

Ensemble Aleph: Dominique Clement, bass clarinet, Christophe Roy, cello and Sylvie Drouin, piano. September 27, 2012. Nicosia, Cyprus

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Archive number

MF34700

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