The composer Terje Bjørklund

I´ve ben listening to Terje Bjørklunds CD "Music for strings"; it´s fabulous music! Its deep felt neoromantic polytonal music. If you are into John Corrigliano this is the music just for you. Bjørklund's project is "dangerous". He copies in great extend different known styles as Corrigliano does. But he manages to make it really original through the way he combines the elements and builds form. A huge problem for the so called modernists is that they concentrate only on the material, and forget the overall formal design. Bjørklund manages through his superior craftsmanship to make deep felt authentic music. So now I´m going to study his scores more closely.

Wine and the Eiffel Tower

A really great thing about Paris, is that the wines are marvellous. Julie (14,5) doesn't like wine, but she has learned how to open the bottles... During our stay in Paris we also visited the Eiffel Tower

Decomposing composer

In Paris we visited Hecor Berlioz' grave at Cemetier Montmartre. Here are some pictures. 

Wenn man eine Reise tut

I´m in Paris together with Malin and Julie (14,5) in the Norwegian Composer Union's flat at Pigalle. The idea is that composers can combine work and vacation (I needed four days to connect my MacBook Pro with the rest of the equipment installed in the flat - it's not about connecting - I know that part by heart, it's more about a kind of permanent writers block...) A colleague of mine (Synne Schouen) would like to have a upright piano in the flat, and I agree with her. The sound and "feeling" (I hate that word "feeeeeliiiing") would be much better than the Roland plastic keyboard (there is a work around: connect the Roland keyboard to your computer, and play the sound from f.ex. Apple Logic Pro within the computer). I've got some colleagues who work with microtonality. I might do it myself in the future, but until then I see so many possibilities within the the twelve tone tempred scale that I would continue to explore.

Pausefisk

Malin has bought an Apple iPod Touch 32 GB on Saturday. And she has drawn the "Pausefisk" on it. Recordings of fishes were used between the programs on the telly in Norway in the old days...

Composing music: Kampf mit dem inneren Schweinehund

I'm reading "Ungebrochene Zeichen" which is a book about the composer Klaus Huber (Pfau-Verlag 2005). Klaus Huber is a must to know. His music has it all. Claus-Steffen Mahnkoph writes about Huber that his way of composing is a struggle with one's weaker self Kampf mit dem inneren Schweinehund. For me it is important that I for every new composition discover something new. I have to surprise my self. I do not want to find "my own style" and write pieces year after year with small alterations. Mahnkopf writes about Huber, that Huber isn't famous as Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann because he doesn't repeat himself. I want composition to be a struggle, without a kind of utopia music has no meaning to me.

Now is the future - what is progress

I´m reading a book about the progress in music. (Musik-Konzepte No. 100 Was heißt Fortschritt; Edition Text + Kritik 1998). Ernstalbert Stiebler has written a text which has Verdi's saying "Torniamo allàntico sará un progresso as heading. (Let us go back to the old times: it will be progress). For me it is impossible to be a composer without knowing the past. What makes my music is this knowledge; using classical instrument is composing within a historical context. But there are loads of composers who are just epigones. They like to see them selves as avant garde, but is it possible to be avant garde? In the book Konrad Boehmer is attaching Pierre Boulez for creating a kind of "new speech" just to pretend being avant garde; but what he does could be explained through an existing language starting with the Middle Ages. The post second world war modern classical music has a huge problem that still exist (and I know this from my own work): First the composer has to find out which music will suit his and hers political and esthetical view, then he or she writes music according to this, not asking what is within the composer him or here self, afraid of finding nothing. I've been struggling a lot with this question. A music which be pretend to be avant garde is all ready out dated. It is much more to music than pretending being avant garde.