Donemus Webwinkel

Overige auteurs:
Veldhuis, Jacob ter (Componist)
Toelichting:
During a camping holiday on the forested Catalonian coast in May 1987, I heard the peculiar call of a bird unknown to me at night. The bird moved in wide circles above the dark forest while singing. It was a short, regular tone repeated over and over, with a small grace note, so monotonous that at first, I suspected it might be location signals from electronic devices or perhaps even satellites.
A year later, on the Italian west coast north of Rome, I heard the same bird again, but now in greater numbers. There were four or five of them producing a complex, aleatoric polyphony together. Each bird sang its monotonous tune at a different pitch and pace, following its own individual course above the forest.
After some research, I discovered that it was the *otus scops*, the Eurasian scops owl, a rather elusive bird in Southern Europe. These experiences inspired me to write *Toccata*. At that time, At the time I was still grappling with the problem of tonality versus atonality. I refused to give in to the atonal and serial trend that had a strong hold on almost all composers back then and was searching for a musically satisfying way to maintain harmony. I decided to choose a tonal center within the symmetry of the piano keyboard, selecting D as the central note, around which I composed a complex pattern of the repetitive calls of the scops owls. Over time the musical texture thickens, the pianist eventually runs out of hands and is forced to play the central D with the nose, visually imitating the diving movement of the owl towards its prey.
I was immensely pleased with my new piece, but I hadn’t yet realised that it was almost unplayable. I dedicated the *Toccata* to my friend Kees Wieringa. As Kees tried desperately to master the piece, I realised that itwas actually a parodic pastiche, a satire on what I found to be the laughable complexity of much of the avant-garde music that time, where the pianist’s nose had to provide a solution. In Darmstadt, Keres and I gave a lecture-recital about the use of the nose in modern piano literature for a full audience of musicologists and other experts. I expected to elicit laughter, but we apparently presented our session so convincingly that our audience took a genuine interest in the delicate touch of the nose, ranging from pianissimo to a maximum of mezzo-forte, considering its vulnerability.

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