«My feeling is that it’s the center of Dutch contemporary music»

«I go to the Bimhuis not as a performer but as a listener; in fact I go there as listening composer. Most of my most memorable (and, what’s the word, «inspiring,» that will have to do) musical experiences in Amsterdam since I have lived here (five years or so) have taken place in the Bimhuis. My feeling is that it’s the center of Dutch contemporary music. Am I not forgetting something (or somewhere)? No, I’m not: I’m saying that the «official» contemporary music places (and not only those places) are of less interest. To this listener, of course; but also to this listener as composer. For example, as regards musical instruments (to name only these), I don’t (generally) find it very enlightening to go to Concert Hall X and hear what Composer Y (fill in the usual suspects) has to say about them, when it’s possible to go to the Bimhuis and hear what Ab Baars or Han Bennink or Peter van Bergen or Wolter Wierbos or any of the countless foreign visitors (not forgetting the almost as numerous expats) have to say about them.

Does that imply a view of composition as parasitic upon improvised music? Well, it’s true that in the ’60s, many composers got the idea that including «improvisation» in their products would «liberate» performers in some way, from the «tyranny of the score.» (A lot of improvisers thought so too, and still do: the other side of the same understanding.) Is this what I’m on about? No: improvising isn’t about setting musicians free (nor are their imaginations (necessarily) imprisoned by notation); it’s about setting sounds free. This is why taking improvised music seriously is essential for composers (to speak only of these). By which I don’t mean the importing of jazz (or whatever) mannerism for (I suspect) sentimental or audience-milking reasons. I mean absorbing the continuing revitalization of musical vocabularies which is a (by?)product of improvised music at its most intensely creative. This is one of the things improvisation can do which composition can’t.

There are however things that only composition can do. Sounds, once set in motion, by whatever means, belong to nobody. Is it important to categorize those means? Or should we just listen, and think about what we’re hearing?

At the Bimhuis I’ve had listening experiences so inward that they felt like playing an imaginary duet with the musician on stage; others where the effect of the entire audience on the music was a palpable «force»; others (I’m bound to add) where the music seemed to involve no contact at all, either with itself or with the listeners. That’s the risk you take, the risk musicians should be taking, on stage or at the writing desk.»

Richard Barrett, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Bimhuis

Related posts:  Tom Arthurs and Richard Fairhurst  //