Gilius van Bergeijk - modern Dutch Composer

After 7.50 min. Song:Der Tod und das Madchen.

(On Death and Time) 1980 An Homage to Franz Schubert

On Death and Time was commissioned by the NOS broadcasting organization. It is based on Schubert's song Der Tod und das Mädchen, an extremely short song, which deals with the age-old theme of Death seducing a young girl. A number of contrasts is immediately apparent in Schubert's song: the chorale-like serenity of the beginning and end as against the operatic middle section, the girl is young and pretty while Death is repulsively ugly, also the transition from Life to Death is represented by a 'pseudomodulation' from D minor to D major. Is this the fashionable romantic death-wish of the period, or did Schubert really see Death as a release from the troubles of Life? Or is it merely a technical device, a deliberate modernism, as contemporaries supposed? - Speculations. In On Death and Time these contrasts are enlarged by using the tool Time (chronological time) in order to transform Historical Time. Thus in the first movement (Life) use is made only of electronic (i.e. synthetic, therefore dead) sounds grouped according to the laws of tonality, although historically electronic music was the product of atonality. All sounds are electronically edited: here human action (Life) is electronic action (Death). The second movement (the seduction scene, the transition from Life to Death) uses musique concrète techniques: the transition from electronic music to live music. The sounds are isolated from the objects producing them (living musicians), therefore die, and are themselves turned into objects and come to life by means of electronic manipulation (cf. Pierre Schaeffer, L'Objet Sonore). Purely by means of Time the transition also takes place from tonality to atonality, and the editing is done by hand (scissors and adhesive tape): here human action is mechanical action. Live music, organ and live electronics, is used for the first time in the third movement (Death). The electronics are controlled by the sounds from the organ (the organist 'plays' the electronic equipment by playing the organ). The tonal structure of the organ sounds is destroyed by the electronics, and the result is an antitonality or non-tonality, although historically the organ is the product par excellence of modal or tonal music. By analogy with the original song there is as little development in Time in the third movement as in the first, this in contrast to the middle section. Consequently there is only a static situation, one that even has to do without the tension of tonal relationships, although the ,editing' here is in fact musical action (organplaying). Death: chronological time ceases, historical time (the regal as in Monteverdi's Orfeo) is destroyed by the jubilant crackling of the electronics (Death as Liberation, the Major Key). Technical realization:
1st Movement: Multiple pulse-conglomerations were tuned (by means of tape-transpositions), filtered and placed in seven one-voice layers and consequently synchronized according to an 'arrangement' of the original Schubert song.
2nd Movement:
The recordings of the (one-voice) vocal part and five (one-voice) pre-arranged piano parts were synchronized so that the original song reappeared. One fragment is repeated 13 times. With each repetition more notes are altered, e.g. transposed up- or downwards. By increasing the tape speed a higher pitch results as well as a shorter length of tape. By decreasing the speed a lower pitch and a longer length result. The synchronization is therefore influenced, the six one-voice layers shift away from each other. The degree of change increases per note with each repetition: a new song emerges.
3rd Movement: The sounds of the organ are treated according to the same filtering principles as the pulse conglomerations of the first movement. The unstable feedback circuit is now influenced by the density of the organ sounds themselves. The production was made with the assistance of: Beer Gertenbach (technical assistant), Geertje Kuipers (contralto), Jan Sprij (piano), Huub ten Hacken (organ).