One Noon
transitional music for midday from the cycle Day Dailyfor six percussionists (2011)
audio
listen here or in soundcloudmp3 | First performance by Circus S
Hannover, February 3, 2013
program note
›One Noon‹ for six percussionists, from the cycle ›Day Daily‹ [›Dag Dagelijks‹]›One Noon‹ is about twelve o’clock midday, when the sun is at its highest point and situated due south. At noon the world is at the centre of full daylight. Everything is right. Everything is in motion during this brief moment, which itself stands still: a peak of passing time. Noon is also the moment of foreboding, of the gods, of sharply divided shadows, of heat and contrast. During the solar eclipse, which occurs precisely at noon , and of which he makes clever use, Hades overpowers Persephone, who, all unsuspecting, is playing in the green meadow, and carries her off to the underworld. The story of this abduction is the subject of an upcoming piece of music, which casts its shadow in ›One Noon‹.
The blazing sun in the sky, the shadows on earth, the refections and sparkles, the clouds passing in front of the sun, all caused me to deploy exclusively metal instruments for this celebration of noon. Each percussionist plays a crash cymbal, a ride cymbal and a wind gong. The percussionists are placed around the audience, making the sound rotation audible. The dynamic peaks and instrumental timbres rotate simultaneously in opposite directions.
The piece opens with the massive and long-sustained sound of the crash cymbals. Following the sound cloud of metal pitched instruments, the first rotation begins, which, with gradual acceleration, leads to the period of the crash cymbals. This is followed by the second rotation, which is in retrograde imitation of the first. This movement from back to front leads to the period of the wind gongs. This forms the starting point of the third rotation, with the ride cymbals, which is in fact a repetition of the first. By means of the gradual acceleration, the music now turns back into the sound cloud from the beginning of the piece, followed by a retrograde motion of the massive sound of the crash cymbals with which the piece began. The work concludes with a coda for the pitched instruments. The music rolls itself up and unrolls itself, as it were, and thereby reflects the apparent standstill of noon.
(Translation: Robert Coupe)
Day Daily – the cycle
The cycle Day Daily forms a network of compositions and sub-cycles such as Nous le chant and Day Daily – The Hours.Day Daily consists of four sections composed for the transitional moments in the day: midnight (Nous le chant I & II), the break of day (De dag daagt for organ,) midday (One Noon for six percussionists) and nightfall (»wonen is het Westen« for small ensemble.)
These transitional moments are bound together by twenty short one-minute pieces from the cycle Day Daily - The Hours. Together these represent the twenty-four hours of the day.
All the sections may be performed separately.
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