This is a two-movement symphonic work. In performance, groups of speakers are set up in a frame-like structure to reproduce the sound spatially. The orchestra in its usual instrumentation is placed behind speakers 1 and 2 up front. The soundtracks constitute the most important musical motion. The coloured noises are the fundamental sounds. The orchestra plays the notes, outlining the mass. Like in many preceding compositions, noise, the primordial formlessness of sound, has been chosen as the densest cluster that – like light – contains the entire spectrum of pitches that we can hear. Sunlight through a shower briefly shows us the most important colours. The sound of the waves breaking on the shore and the storm – spatial – overawes us. In a packed stadium, a goal hits home. Nevertheless, tones can be heard separately with every enthusiastic human cry. In a mass, these combine to form ‘noise’. The distinctive appeal of listening to and participating in a singing mass of people produces interference and coloured (tonal) noise. Similarly, a preference for coloured noise is also visibly built into the physical arrangement of our orchestras. The bows with their horsehair rubbed with rosin, producing minute differences in pitch when many violins, violas, cellos and double basses are played simultaneously, create a noise-like curtain of sound up front. Behind them, the woodwinds, brass and percussion – and, in oratorio, behind them yet another gigantic coloured noise of voices. In Phases, the quadraphonic arrangement and space feature prominently. The antiphonal effects and the shifting of sounds by the space create a massive sense of motion, thereby turning the space itself into an instrument. The form thus consists of shrinking and expanding continuous sounds. The first movement is an introduction, focused on penetrating the strings’ noise. A coloured noise in which string instruments and the group of woodwinds accentuate several fundamental pitches and harmonics is generated electronically. This short movement presents a blend, the beginning of the idea in sound: Phases. In the second movement, all the groups of the orchestra (strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion) are to express, individually and overlapping with each other, this symphonic notion. The orchestra avoids intonation and figuration as much as possible, thereby leaving the timbre free of instrumental practices and customs. Phases culminates in a tutti of enormous sound fields. In a diminuendo, one fundamental chord separates itself from the whole, leading to silence.

Commissioned by the Municipality of Utrecht.

(from the Music Information Centre Donemus MuziekGroep Nederland)