CROSSROADS/LANE

2008 (19′57″)
For double bass, oboe and traffic sounds
Double bass: Erik Winkelmann

The composition ‘Crossroads/Lane’ is based on a melody diary that I have compiled over the past months by singing and humming melodies and their rhythms. Of course, anyone can do this. The composer is able to creatively musicalize these melodies and merge them into a whole.

‘Crossroads/Lane’ took place in an atelier for lead glass windows in the small town of Thorn (limburg), a magical place, which the clairvoyant Jelle Veeman (1922 – 2007) visited, perceived special energies and powers there and described them in the book ‘12 magische plaatsen in Nederland’ (ISBN: 9789061342793, 1986, Hans van den Bosch).

After my concert ‘Sunwheel’ (1992) in the sun observatory of Robert Morris in Lelystad I had met Jelle Veemans and read his book. For Jelle Thorn was one of those magical places and so ‘Crossroads/Lane’ should take place there, a reminiscence to this parapsychologist who had died in the meantime.

Furthermore, traffic played a special role in ‘Sunwheel’, as a motion detector measured the traffic flow and the data obtained influenced the rotation of sounds in real time.

‘Crossroads/Lane’ takes up these thoughts again. Sound recordings of moving objects such as cars, motorcycles and trucks were made in a crypt, for example. This created alienation effects, gave the sounds different acoustic properties, which transposed them from their usual reality into a perhaps magical space.

Also the contrast between this fleeting and the sound spectrum of the double bass gives ‘Crossroads/Lane’ a peculiar brilliance, which is also underlined by the contrapuntally conceived, baroque-like duet between the double bass and the oboe.

Place and time can no longer be determined, paths fade away, orientation no longer seems possible. The listener goes his way in ‘Crossroads/Lane’, the goal is uncertain and so he lets himself drift, no matter where it leads.

‘Crossroads/Lane’ is a road music, a music film, which is composed in a cinematic, visually associative way, with an arc of tension, which captures the constant change of melody and rhythm in different musical styles.