BROKEN or "Why don't you say a word..." (2001/2002)
a kind of 'orchestral love song' for orchestra and sample keyboard
Duration: 9 min.
Commissioned work by the "Kammerakademie Potsdam"
WP: May 2002, PotsdamChamber Music Academy Potsdam, conductor: Sian Edward
Performance material available from Boosey & Hawkes
see also youtube
exact instrumentation:
1 Fl, 1 Ob, 1 Klar in Bb,1 Baßklar, 1 Fag,1 Trpt, 2 Hrn in F, 1 Pos, 2 Perc, prep. Klav,/ Sample-Keyb (1 player), 6 I Vln, 5 II Vln, 4 Vla, 4 Vc, 2 Kb.
Text (from sampler):
Listen
This
Is a true story
About a woman and a man
And the loss of love how they called it in their fucking notabene.
Ha, you don't want to listen' ?
You don't want to hear that?
You don't want to listen to me?
It's love, so you told me and 'only you...only you...' in the kind of 'you are my destiny...'
I mean, we still look good together, even without love...
But we have nothing to say to each other... or too much...
Even our music is not a sure thing anymore. Maybe because it's not a real language...
Just only a kind of breathing.
The breath of two astmatics,
whose breath sobs in and out
all their live long...
in and out
through a small fuzzy pipe...
Why are you gone away
without to say
just one word?
Why?
from the programme of the performance in Chemnitz 2014:
The composition BROKEN or "Why don't you say a word ..." was written in 2001/2002 as a commission from the Chamber Music Academy Potsdam. Iris ter Schiphorst wrote that it was "... a kind of whimsical little 'pop song' about love, an 'orchestral love song', if you like..." The premiere took place in Potsdam in May 2002 with conductor Sian Edwards.
The work is in three parts, with only the first part clearly separated from the second by a general pause, while the transition to the third part is attaca. Iris ter Schiphorst has chosen an orchestra that is not too large. The classical symphony orchestra with a simple wind section (only the horns are in pairs), strings and percussion are joined by a piano and a sample keyboard.
Words play a role in many of Iris ter Schiphorst's compositions. Here, they are pre-produced texts that are controlled from the keyboard during the performance. They are about a lost love and the question Why are you gone away without to say just one word? - Why have you gone away without saying just one word?
At the beginning, there are single words, whispered between the scraps of sound from the instruments, which are not really perceptible. Speechlessness, difficulty in expressing oneself determine what happens in the orchestra, moaning string glissandi, distorted sounds in the winds, no coherent melody. This is followed by an agonised "song" on the keyboard, soon supported by the trumpet. Something is set in motion: the high strings sing over a driving accompanying motif in the orchestra. The march-like movement becomes louder and louder until, after a chromatically descending tutto run, two lonely piano notes end the first part.
After a general pause, the second part, which is labelled "very slow", begins. While the low instruments intonate a chorale-like melody, the soft singing of a high female voice can be heard from afar. The oboe, violin and cello emerge with short motivic interjections. The third section opens with a tutti chord in triple forte. This is followed by a syncopated, distorted march, which seems as if it is increasingly limping and finally turns into fast running - fleeing perhaps. The steady striding from the first part then regains the upper hand; ostinato movements in the bass clarinet, bassoon, marimba, cellos and double basses set the tempo, which picks up speed towards the end before coming to an abrupt halt.
Iris ter Schiphorst wants to touch the audience with her music, wants to arouse emotions, wants to pass on something of herself and her feelings: "For me, music is language, whether I like it or not. In a very original sense, it's about expressing something, communicating something. The starting point is always my body. When something moves me a lot, a kind of inner monologue is set in motion in me that encompasses the whole body on very different levels, indeed via very different senses."
Reviews
Happiness with the 3 women , 16.01.2014 From the houses
Iris ter Schiphorst is 58, but young and happy in both mind and composing hand. Her music is - as people from Chemnitz will understand - like the sound of Osmar Osten. Scurrilous at times, mixing up all the techniques, word-smashing, aesthetically dabbling and thickly spatulary. This is also how the opening work of the symphony concert comes across: Iris ter Schiphorst's piece "Broken, oder 'Why don't you say a word...'", written for the Potsdam Chamber Orchestra (and which she herself has polished up with sample technology)
Orchestra manager Susanne Fohr and the theatre's sound engineers had to follow the composer's precise instructions: which sampler to use, which plugs to use, how to position the speakers. It all worked. Electronic sounds and distorted fragments of words wafted around the orchestral tutti (here too, precise instructions: six first violins, five second violins ...). The stage directions alone are a witty work of art in themselves.
Ter Schiphorst is well known in Chemnitz. Several of her works have already been performed here. One even premiered here, "Eden Cinema" in 2005 by the Ensemble 01 led by Andreas Winkler. He was stung when the conductor kept showing the score to the audience during the friendly applause: "I can't help it" (true, more on that later), "this woman did this", he was probably trying to tell us. The woman would have loved to have been in Chemnitz, where she has many friends and where several portrait concerts are being dedicated to her this year. But the poor thing was in bed in Berlin with severe bronchitis. Hopefully she will come to the symphony concert in March, when her "Hundert Komma Null" (with which she has made a name for herself as a composer worldwide) will be performed.
The musicians of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra love this woman, they get involved in every weird rhythm, every syncopated note, even in (sometimes too) long, normal swinging passages. The only thing missing was that Iris ter Schiphorst herself would have stood on stage with an electric guitar and played the bass, as she did when she was a trained pianist who also rocked out in a band.