Symphony No. 190

by Leif Segerstam

("UFO, Under F & Over..."), "UFO, Under F & Over..."

Empty sheet

Leif Segerstam

Symphony No. 190

Music Finland

Description

I composed the Symphony No.190 UFO, under F & over immediately (starting, during...) after attending an interesting lecture about UFOs by Timothy Good, who visited Finland (Helsinki) two years ago. Numerologic coincidences, eg. on licence plates of cars passing by or parked 'meaningfully' prior to the day before the lecture tickled the registers of fantasizing both in awakened state (sober or drunk...) and probably also in the subconscious and in the dreamworlds or when telepathic coincidences arouse challenging question marks...

When now La forza del destino arranged the world premiere of No.190 to take place 'down under...' it certainly felt like a portion of black humour, considering how it would affect the name, with its aspects of under or over or rather over & under...

My thoughts around the focus of the F-tone went back to the 70s when I utilised in my work Patria the juxtaposing of the leading tone E and sharptone [supertonic] G as a pendel of energy motivating the choice of half or whole steps, like the Finnish people between the orient and occident can choose their inspiration and influence from both sides, and wait until they are ready to take the decisions...not to be a robot-like on-off binary fool in life despite pressure from the cybertechnics...

The Symphony No.190, like all my others (now 230), has a 'Rosenkranz' form - as if fondling a sonic prayer-bracelet with six pearls of visions of c. three-four minutes; the free fantasy of a gigantic chamber-musical happening of free-pulsative music-making by a large symphony orchestra performing without a conductor and showing the latent creativity of the interpreters in their way of deciding the attribute functions (of speed, dynamic level, colour, rubato, phrasing, length of pauses in between playing...) but not aleatorically changing or improvising any note in this very exactly-written texture for the together soundings (old Greek = sinfonia) arranged by the 'tone-choosers,' not the 'composer.' Havefun!

Leif Segerstam 2009


Instrumentation

2222 4331 13 2, 2pno, str [pic, ehn, bcl, cbsn]


Category

Works for Orchestra or Large Ensemble


Premiere

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, cond. Leif Segerstam, Hamer Hall, The Arts Centre, Melbourne, Australia, November 28, 2009


PDF for promotional use

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Archive number

MF20444


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