Grandfather Louis Toebosch was a famous organist and composer. His daughter - her aunt - Moniek an equally well-known artist and performer; mother recorder teacher, father Mozart-crazy: 'When I left home I couldn't hear a recorder or Mozart!' Mayke Nas (Voorschoten, 1972) is no stranger to making music and composing. In doing so, she likes to avoid the beaten track and writes fresh compositions, which do not necessarily consist of notes, and often raise a smile.
Thus, volunteers from the audience and unprepared musicians in Anyone Can Do It respond to instructions from a 'sadist, preferably the composer himself' invisible to the audience. The audience neither hears nor sees what commands the performers are given and only sees their reactions, for instance that they suddenly smile, smell their armpit or fold their arms over each other in deadly earnest. In her string quartet withorwithoutone movement is performed entirely without instruments, with precisely prescribed movements - the world's first 'air quartet'.
In 2006, she composed for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra No Reason to Panic, as an entr'acte while hoisting the grand piano up from the catacombs of the Concertgebouw's Great Hall. As the strings left the stage, the remaining musicians produced a cacophony of alarms. Six years later, she wrote for the same orchestra Down the Rabbit-Hole, which was awarded the Kees van Baaren Prize. It will be awarded on Saturday 14 May during the Dag in de Branding festival in The Hague. Six questions to Mayke Nas.
Whence the title: Down the Rabbit-Hole?
'That one presented itself automatically. When I got the assignment, my first reaction was: wow, I get to use that whole set of instruments! A symphony orchestra offers an enormously rich palette of possibilities, in No Reason to Panic I should have limited myself to wind and percussion players. On the other hand, it was also a bit frightening; it was my first real orchestral work. The fretting about what decisions I was going to make could easily double, especially with the Concertgebouw Orchestra: the best is not good enough yet.
But then I decided: I don't want fear, I want adventure! I can do whatever I want. At that moment, the title of the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland come to mind, 'Down the Rabbit-Hole'. That phrase is synonymous with adventure. I wanted to go down the rabbit hole and bring out everything I found. Then I came up with the idea of having the music make descending movements all the time, deeper and deeper into that hole.
By the way, that was easier said than done. The piece starts very high, with rarefied flageolets. Then it slowly sizzles into the depths, but already after about four minutes I had reached the lowest point. There the orchestra falls silent for a moment. Then it gets going again, with rustling and crunching percussion and plucked string motifs. Then those fall movements keep returning. The piece stumbles and hops, rattles and tinkles, and you hear constantly descending motifs, until the piece slowly comes to a halt with elongated chords, to which the percussion makes a crackling point.'
You write that while composing, you were inspired by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles. In what way?
'I used that song as a musical starting point, it also refers to Alice in Wonderland. The complicated thing is: if you mention that, everyone is going to listen to that, but it's hard to hear back. The Beatles song opens with a motif in the guitar, then the voice kicks in. I kept stretching and shrinking that opening run, just like Alice in the book keeps getting bigger and smaller.
At the beginning, you hear that accompaniment melody in its most flattened form in the pizzicati of the first and second violins; I gradually stretch that out slowly, both in timing and pitch. In its extreme form, it is later stretched out over a longer passage in sustained, widely spaced signal tones from the brass. Literally sounding nowhere, it was mostly a fun play element for me. By the way, I worked on it for a long time, about a year and a half for a 12-minute piece. It's long searches sometimes.'
Did you change things after the premiere?
'For a second performance by Philharmonie Zuidnederland in November Music 2013, I did indeed make a substantial revision. There were some passages in the first version for the Concertgebouw Orchestra that didn't work. Problem is: I play piano, but not an orchestra. I can't just try out an idea in my study, turn an orchestra on or off. I had tried all kinds of things with chamber music players, but an orchestra is a different entity.
When I heard the performance, I immediately understood at what moments things went wrong. That was an expensive orchestration lesson. Together with conductor Bas Wiegers and Ondrej Adamek, a composer I met in Berlin and who can play impressive instruments, I scrutinised all those passages. Sometimes there were just too many layers sliding over each other, which I have now filtered out. The piece has been thinned out a bit, simplified a touch and instrumented better. '
One reviewer spoke of "sagging third stacks", what should we imagine?
'There are a lot of triads in the piece, which slowly sink in. I liked working with such a recognisable chord. Then you immediately have the whole of classical music as a frame of reference, just like pop music: it has an amazing richness, simplicity and directness. By leaving one layer in place while another becomes lower and lower, friction is created and you get a kind of Doppler effect, a bit like an ambulance passing by. This is how I turn something ordinary into something extraordinary and special. If you let an already crazy chord fall through its hooves, it has less effect. I used the alienating effect to give voice to the descent down the rabbit hole.'
Is it important for you to write for orchestra?
'Yes, actually I do. The symphony orchestra is insanely valuable cultural asset. It would be a great pity if it only had a museum function. The set of instruments is quite old now and was already crystallised in Wagner's time. At most, a few more percussion instruments have been added since then, but the palette is far from exhausted. Composers have to keep exploring new things, there is still plenty to get. I find it a challenge to create new timbres with special combinations of sound, certain details and different instruments.'
You were awarded the Kees van Baaren Prize for Down the Rabbit-Hole, what does that mean to you?
'I have to tell you: I was surprised to get it. Especially for this piece, because I had so many doubts about it. It wasn't until Bas Wiegers performed the revised version with the Philharmonie Zuidnederland that it landed on its feet. If such a committee considers this something special in the Dutch musical landscape, it feels like great recognition: it is not only something I enjoy doing myself, but also means something to others.
You can kid yourself a lot, it's hard to have a sense of purpose. That uncertainty is a double-edged sword: it's hard for myself to decide when a piece is good. And I necessarily want it to be good; after all, it's public money, it has to add value to the world. That cannot be measured. With all this hacking at the cultural sector, I constantly have a little voice in my head: my neighbours who have no interest in it at all have also contributed to it.
I try to dismiss that thought, for example by telling myself that I, in turn, contribute to football, but that counter argument does not always work. The strange thing is that with other composers, I do find it invaluable that we listen to them. But for myself, in that little room, it's less easy to justify. Appreciation you get when the audience or musicians say something positive. But even then I often think: they like me, or: it's my mother. An award like this is more serious. That one gives me the feeling: what I do is worth something.'
Day in the Branding 14 May
Residentie Orkest / Otto Tausk: a.o. Mayke Nas, Down the Rabbit-Hole
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