A One Minute Symphony for Beethoven
World premiere May 24 at Amare!
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A special One Minute Symphony written by composer Nikos Galenianos will be heard on May 24. This time not a meeting turned into music but a musical tribute to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which can blow out two hundred candles this month. What is it like for a contemporary composer to write a piece played right before Beethoven's world-famous symphony and where does Nikos Galenianos get his inspiration?
"At first it sounded a little surreal and even funny," Nikos recounts. "Beethoven 9 is really a monumental piece and one of my favorites. In such cases, I see two options: either you get overwhelmed and get stuck, or you go your own way and observe if and how your own material merges with Beethoven. Initially, I decided to completely ignore the fact that Beethoven's Ninth would follow my piece and see where the flow would take me. As time passed, I began to see an interesting effect - that the music I was creating contained a grounded, "forward-moving" energy, similar to Beethoven's Ninth. It's totally different music, yet there appeared to be a common ground."
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Inspiration
"My work often deals with ancient or medieval texts, such as Dante's Inferno, John Milton's Paradise Lost or ancient Greek tragedy. I use such sources as primal material, I process and deconstruct the text and what ultimately remains is my own emotional response to it. I am also interested in ancient a cappella music [vocal music without accompaniment, ed.] and the Last time I am engaged in the conception of prelinguistic (baby) speech. Although I don't always make vocal music, there are elements of that, including in this new work."
"Until now, I had never incorporated an actual quote into my music. That is something I consciously avoid because I prefer my music not to be affected by other, pre-existing melodies. Now for the first time I am using a quotation, obviously from the Ninth, almost as an illusion, as if it never took place. This is because of the strong extra-musical and conceptual path I have taken."
"It's important while listening to it to think about where we are in relation to what's happening right now, otherwise it's a missed opportunity on what this wonderful music is offering."
- Nikos Galenianos
Relevance
"When I was given this assignment, I went to the original source: Schiller's Ode an die Freude. The poem's context and humanistic ideals are common knowledge. What fewer people know is that shortly after writing it, Schiller distanced himself from the idealistic context and considered the poem a naïve relic of the past, because of the political situation in Europe at the time. When I read this, my thoughts about the piece I would compose changed completely. It is a personal desire to avoid direct statements about actual political or social conditions through music. Nevertheless, in this case I could not possibly ignore the fact that Schiller's later coolness toward Ode an die Freude is entirely appropriate to our times. It is impossible to deny that with this piece we are celebrating values that have little relevance to contemporary social and political realities anymore. For once again in human history, war is spreading everywhere, and European countries are once again making huge cuts (including, of course, to culture) to support their military programs. I am not saying that the Ninth Symphony should not be performed, quite the contrary! It is our duty to remain optimistic and this particular music comes where words and actions do not. However, I believe that we must put things, including this music, in a realistic perspective. It is important while listening to it to think about where we stand in relation to what is happening right now, otherwise it is a missed opportunity at what this wonderful music brings."
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PseudOde
"My composition is called PseudOde, which comes from pseudo (untrue) and ode. It refers to all the already mentioned thoughts about the values embodied by the Ninth Symphony. Still, I would prefer to leave the interpretation of the title open, because it also occurred to me as an appropriate but not 100% clearly defined word. I don't care how people react to my composition, although I hope for a reaction! Then I will know if my music touches someone."