Idiosyncrasy (2007)
Flute, duduk, sho, qanun, mandolin, cello and tenor
Premièred on april 18th 2007 at Paradiso in Amsterdam by the Nieuw Ensemble conducted by Bas Wiegers. Tenor is Bassem Alkhouri
Idiosyncrasy was written for the ‘Orientations’ project of the Nieuw Ensemble. It is based on a poem by flemmish poet Peter Verhelst that was written in morse code. This code structurizes the piece as a sort of DNA-code. Both form and tonal material were derived from it and followed strictly. However, as human beings are not only determined by their DNA-code in developping as an individual, there are dozens of factors that determined the character of this piece, apart from it’s DNA-code.
Since the poem is notated vertically, word by word, each word having it’s own ‘DNA’, I tried to uncover both semantic as musical characteristics for each word individually.
The poem itself is about although we are being determined there is still an individual choice. To be nothing, or to become anything....
