fuoco e fumo - per orchestra
- Submitting institution
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University of Durham
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 86555
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- The disastrous event of the burning down of Venice's iconic opera house La Fenice (January 1996) forms the extra-musical background for what is in fact a totally abstract compositional concept. Analogous to a slowly growing fire, the key feature of this orchestral work is a gradual crescendo structure of intensifying musical gestures, the musical material of which expands accumulatively until it finally collapses. The research was focused on developing novel approaches to conceiving music with a minimal amount of material while expanding the underlying concept to maximal scale. The piece contests the stereotypes of mainstream minimal music from the 1980s and 1990s (Reich, Glass, and Adams), and instead, picks up from where Bernd Alois Zimmermann left off in his orchestral prélude Photoptosis (1968). From a compositional point of view, the work investigates self-similar processes (cf.: Tom Johnson), where elements are being developed by repeated applications of a single procedure. In doing so, it focuses on how the conception of repetition can be redefined, more specifically by re-scrutinizing the narrow borderline between principles of similarity versus dissimilarity. The abovementioned self-similar parameters not only govern aspects of time, but also the composition’s harmonic parameters. The orchestral tone poem fuoco e fumo was commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, with whom Rijnvos enjoyed a long-term residency in the period 2011-2017. It was premièred by them on 12 June 2015 in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Daniel Harding conducting. The work was selected for the ISCM World Music Days 2016 in South Korea, where it was performed in its revised version by the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra, Shi-Yeon Sun conducting. In May 2016 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra released the live recording of the première performance in their RCO Horizon CD-series.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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