anthony fiumara’s illuminated notes
Marianne Broeder | 29 March 2008 | VPRO TV Guide
Music lovers may know Anthony Fiumara (1968) as a writer, among others in Trouw, Mens en Melodie, and the Dutch Journal of Music Theory, or as the artistic director of Orchestra De Volharding. Diehards are also aware of him as a composer. From 2004 yearly a number of compositions have seen the light of day. When did his passion for writing notes start?
‘As a musicology student I felt that composers were unattainable beings,’ says Fiumara. ‘That I might be able to compose was even more unthinkable. Only when I started to transpose graphic scores into ordinary notes during lectures in 20th century notation did this perception change. Inside me, something awoke. I had always believed that a composer is totally preoccupied with melodies but suddenly realized there were other options. Images can be converted into notes.
Only at the end of the 1990s, when I was working as a music editor for Donemus, did I feel an urgent need to write my own notes.’
Fiumara composition's show a remarkable feel for both very old and brand-new music.
‘That is correct,’ he concurs. ‘Precisely such extremes are a great source of inspiration. On the one hand, I work with modern structures. For instance, I juggle with series of numbers. Often, I only use a few notes in varying combinations, which constantly generates new harmonies. During these repetitions, listeners seemingly hear the same thing over and over again but not quite. To me this goes hand in hand with a resonant sound. Such sonority can be found in early music, especially in Johannes Ockeghem's prolonged polyphony that creates something resembling a sound field.’
‘Modern music in general strongly refers to early music,' he qualifies. 'In fact there is nothing new under the sun. Composers have always either attempted to write music that reflects their inner feelings or the rules governing the cosmos. I belong to the latter group.’
The Radio Chamber Philharmonic premieres Aperture, his newest composition, this afternoon. It is a tribute to light artist James Turrell. The score reveals a broad sound field that slowly slides from the highest violin note to the lowest note that the contrabassists produce.
Fiumara: ‘Turrell is fascinating because he uses a simple element – light – as a source material for his works of art. In 'Skyspaces' and early pieces like Mendota Hotel Stoppages he steadily moved outside light falling through an aperture to every corner of a particular room. Mesmerizing. I have transposed that image into music.’
‘Aperture is the musical representation of a slowly shifting ray of light that displays all aspects of the spectrum until it dissolves into darkness. I needed tones to do this, not melodies. All of the instrumentalists play a single downward scale comprising 35 notes, each at their own pace.’
Leaving aside numerical sequences, abstract art, and a fascination for cosmic phenomena, why does Fiumara find light so attractive? ‘I love the warm light of summer,’ the composer says, 'and in Turrell's art light becomes so saturated that it becomes almost tangible. I'm hoping that the heat that light can radiate will resonate in Aperture. Perhaps I'm simply a romanticist at heart.’ (translation: Moze Jacobs)