Eterni Ritornelli – composition for violin solo and highly reverberant environment (2017)
From the website http://huubdekort.com/muzikaal-programma/
Eterni Ritornelli was first performed by Martine Littel on December 1, 2017, in a concert concerning the art exhibition of painter Huub de Kort in the Margarita Maria Alacoque Church in Tilburg. Martine also performed the composition beautifully in a second concert on December 10, 2017.
Although the Margarita Maria Alacoque Church in Tilburg was built in the beginning of the 20th century, the reverberation is comparable to the European medieval churches with their extremely long reverb times.
This reverberant environment was a great opportunity for me to write ‘a melody in dialogue with itself.’ In order to be able to write this echoing music, I visited the church several times to sing, to experiment and to try out early drafts of the piece with my girlfriend the violinist Martine Littel.
The composition exists of three variants of a refrain and three different couplets. The musician may choose the sequence of the parts, but always has to begin and end with refrain I, so the whole composition consists of seven parts. The notation rhythm is nothing more than a suggestion of long sustained notes and shorter melodic notes. The rhythm is very loose, like Ancient Chant.
So far, there is no recording of the work, but I intend to record the piece to share an audio file with you on this website.