A Glass Bead Game
Elef Nesheim
The first complete performance of the A Glass Bead Game, at the Bergen International Festival in 2005, is a special event in Norwegian musical life. The work is spectacular in conception: an orchestral performance lasting the whole evening, a concert opera comprising six sizeable compositions. The six compositions are designed to be performed either separately or as a totality. Five of the them have been performed earlier; for Through a Prism, this will be the premiere.
In Constant Opposition
Olav Anton Thommessen is a highly educated composer, He first acquired a thorough formal training at the Indiana University School of Music in the USA, where lectures by the composer lannis Xenakis were to influence his compositional approach. The years of study spent in Warsaw and Utrecht also made a lasting impression. Thommessen was captivated by the modern orchestration techniques of the 1960s. In this sense his studies followed a logical path. Xenakis is generally regarded as one of the pioneers of the neo-expressionistic style, which became so firmly entrenched in Poland that it became known as the “Polish school”. A spell at the lnstituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht in the Netherlands gave him an insight into the electro-acoustic basis for sonic studies.
Thommessen has continued his studies throughout his life, also while he has been Professor of Composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. He has accumulated an impressive overview of the nooks and crannies of contemporary music and music history alike. He is a popular lecturer in the most disparate of contexts, whether his subject is his own music or music from the 1700s or the Romantic period.
He is highly alert to social issues, has been an active debater and participant in the cultural policy arena and has frequently expressed opinions on the hazards and temptations that arise in the world of music.
As the son of a diplomat, Thommessen became used to looking at Norway from the outside at an early age. He has preserved this ability. It enables him to view events on Norway's cultural and arts scene from an international vantage point, which has caused some people to regard him as a rebel.
Opus
Olav Anton Thommessen's orchestral works are at centrestage in his voluminous and extremely varied production. He established his position as a composer in the 1970s. Some Sound was selected for performance at the ISCM World Music Days in London in 1972, Upside Down was played by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1973, the same year as Mutually was performed at the Bergen lnternational Festival. Stabsarabesk, which was composed for the Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces and subsequently reworked for symphony orchestra under the title Barbaresk, is his most performed orchestral work.
His opus also features a number of scenic works, such as the operas The Hermaphrodite, Hertuginnen dør (The Duchess Dies) and Cassandra. From Above, a concerto for synthesizer and orchestra (1986), the trumpet concerto The Second Creation, and the violin concrrtos The Great Attractor (1998) and Bull’s Eye (2001), and Near the Comet-Head, an orchestral drama for viola, contralto and large orchestra (1994), are major compositions the loom large in his opus.
This modern one hundred compositions include works for instrument combinations ranging from those used in string quartets, violin sona1:as and piano pieces to compositions featuring lute, electric organ, harp, recorder and accordion. This wealth of variation in sound and expression is a distinctive feature of Thommessen.
Macro-Fantasy on Grieg's A Minor is the first concerto in A Glass Bead Game. The pianist starts with the well known opening chord form Grieg's Piano Concerto - and is told to "think the rest of Grieg's cadenza".
A Glass Bead Game
In 1980 orthereabouts Thom messen became preoccupied with the business of communicating music. His powerfut modernistic commitment was supp!emented with a need to improve music's ability to speak to the audience. It was at this timethat he started work on A Gfass Bead Game. He has commented on the piano concerto Makrofantasi (Macrofantasy) as follows:
It builds on a kind of educational idea. By starting the composition with elements from Grieg's A Minor concerto, and gradually switching to my own material, the work really builds on a universal and familiar educational idea: progressing from the known to the unknown. I thought it would excite the audience's curiosity and increase people's interest in a modem musical work.
Thommessen's use of thematic quotes from earlier, wellknown works in no way reflects a retrospective stance in terms of style. Themes and history are east in the light of his chosen medium of expression: modernism.
The work's overall title is borrowed from HermannHesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game, although it is difficult to read this into the music.
The six compositions are:
1. Prologue
2. Macrofantasy for piano and orchestra based on Grieg's A Minor concerto
3. Beyond Neon, concerto for horn and orchestra
4. Choral Symphony based on Beethoven's Eighth Symphony
5. Through a Prism, concerto for cello, organ and orchestra
6. Encore based on Verdi's Dies lrae
7. Apotheosis
The first three compositions, preceeding the intetval, have a falling structure which ends with the conclusion og Beyon Neon. The three compositions after the interval have a rising structure, peaking in the Apotheopsis.
The opening Prologue (1979) is subtitled Pedagogical Overture. This is a short piece featuring layered sonic elements and including fragments from Handel’s Water Music.
Macrofantasy (1980) has an introduction, followedby the opening from Grieg’s A Minor concerto which signals the presentation of the piano concerto's musical content. To start with, it is all Grieg; then Grieg's material is blended with Thommessen's own material, after which Thommessen's music takes over. Later in the concerto Grieg’s appearances are confined to brief reminders of his presence,
Beyond Neon (1981) is a horn concerto with the subtitle Post-Commercial Sound Sculptures for Horn and Orchestra. The solo horn occupies an elevated stage behind the orchestra, with two horns placed on either side of the orchestra. The work is the scherzo section that completes the first part of the concerto.
After the interval the concerto resumes with Choral Symphony (1979). Written for organ and orchestra, the work builds on the main theme from Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.
Through a Prism, 1982, is a double concerto for cello, organ and orchestra. Thommessen was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize for this work in 1990.
The concerto c!oses with what the composer calls an "encore" in which Verdi's well-known Requiem provides the theme for the finale, Apotheosis.
Translation: Peter Thomas.
The article was published in the book Music in a Free State : Nowegian Orchestra Music 1905-2005 – by Music Information Centre Norway for the 100th anniversary of the dissolution og the Swedish-Norwegian state in 1905. Editor: Erling Sandmo. Press Publishing, c. 2004. Published with permission from author, translator and publisher.