iris ter schiphorst

Composition commissioned by the Philharmonie Südwestfalen/ Landesorchester Nordrhein-Westfalen, made possible by the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen

WP: 23 February 2007 Leonhard-Gläser-Saal, Siegen

Programme booklet
The ensemble work "Zerstören I", premiered in May 2006 at the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, formed the starting point for the orchestral work "Zerstören II".
At the time (2006), I wrote in the accompanying text to the ensemble work: "Based on the current news situation, one could come to the conclusion that a new form of irrationality is on the rise, that archaic 'passions' and brutal violence are increasingly dominating global political events, that values and norms that have gradually become established in the so-called West in the course of enlightenment and secularisation are becoming less and less important and, moreover, are not necessarily exportable. This is perhaps not really surprising, as existential metaphysical questions have gradually been pushed into the background in the process of enlightenment and left to the religions. From this 'corner' they are now apparently catching up with us again, distorted and magnified into monstrosity; a fatal and frightening development, especially for women.
In any case, the images that are currently going around the world are quite impressive and I realise that they do something to me, that they change me. (...) During the work, an 'inner film' became more and more concentrated in me, which at some point became a kind of 'template' for the composition process itself. This 'inner' film had no plot and actually only consisted of recurring short documentary image excerpts that faded in and out, overlapped with other image excerpts, reappeared briefly in another place from a different perspective and at a different pace, only to disappear again. There were always several of these image excerpts to be seen at the same time, i.e. the image surface / the 'screen' was divided several times. The individual images were only vaguely recognisable, as if the camera lens had been scratched during filming. The construction of this 'inner film' guided me through the composition process, as did the 'climate' and the 'basic tone' present from the beginning, a sandy beige-yellow (...)"

In the orchestral work "Zerstören II", the reference to this extra-musical original climate still resonates to a certain extent, because reality, as it is presented to us, occupies me immensely and resonates with me.reality as it is presented to us concerns me immensely and always resonates in my work - indeed, I believe I can say that it is a main impulse for my work, but in this work the 'inner-musical' processes have gained the upper hand.

The title "Zerstören II" is extremely multi-layered and allows for many associations: Destroying as an attitude, as a way of expressing oneself (terrorism) or also of asserting oneself (as it is increasingly becoming an approach recognised as politics - see Iraq policy, the recent Lebanon war, etc.), etc.... It is also about the question of what happens in us when we are confronted again and again with events of this kind; destruction can also - quite simply - be understood as an outburst of rage, perhaps even as catharsis. My compositional concern was that the whole range of possible references beyond words or extra-musical "programmes" should be reflected in the music.

I have different methods of developing sounds. Usually, a kind of rhythmic texture emerges first, based on physical and rhythmic sensations and energies, to which certain sounds - initially blurred - belong. The strenuous process is to specify and write down these multi-layered and sometimes complicated sounds.
Sometimes, however, I also experiment with sounds that I have 'found' or recorded somewhere in order to find out better what kind of sounds I could mean, what sounds move me; in other words, I play with 'sounds' and process them in my computer until I think I have found the right sound.

The dramaturgy of a piece only develops during the work. At first there is only an idea, which becomes more and more concrete during the composition process. In "Zerstören II", for example, there are great extremes: very dense, loud collective tutti parts and very quiet, isolated, almost soloistic passages. The handling of these extremes and their respective use emerge gradually and follow an inner logic of the sounds.

Incidentally, I don't believe that we need extremes (any more than we need computer games or designer drugs). But we live - whether we like it or not - in a world full of extremes, and we have to find an attitude towards them. Perhaps this attitude changes over the course of our lives... I realise that I myself seem to have an 'extreme' reaction to extremes, and it is my way of taking a stand. Sometimes I dream of writing a piece that 'pulls itself out' of everything, that goes its own way completely unimpressed, quietly and silently.

Iris ter Schiphorst (2007)