TEKENEN

based on and M.C.Escher's Drawing hands and J.S.Bach's BWV 1007 and BWV 1079

for viola, cello and motion reactive video

2022-2023

Ensemble: viola, cello, motion reactive projections (optional: 2 violins, percussion)

Duration: 7 min.

Commission: New European Ensemble, The Hague, with the support of Fonds Podiumkunsten & Gemeente Den Haag.

Premiere: 23 Feb 2023, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, New European Ensemble

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Tekenen is a work both musical and visual. The visual aspect is integral to the structure of the composition, with the hands and arms of the two performers (viola and cello: bowed string instruments with inverted postures, like instrumental doppelgängers to each other) as protagonists both through the use of led bows, led strips, as well as captured by cameras or motion-sensors for motion reactive video projections based on M.C.Escher’s Tekenen (Drawing Hands). Escher’s love for Bach’s music was the inspiration for the musical collage, with the Prelude BWV 1007 emerging as the blueprint for a cross-art meta musical intervention, with a fluid soundscape flowing between classical and noise music, between the sound of music and the sound of writing music (tekenen: to draw, to sign), between performance, recomposition and composition, between hearing familiar music and channeling the very moment it came into existence.