Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Olav Anton Thommessen
Beyond Neon
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
- 1+2pic.2+ca.2+bcl.2+cbn/4.2.4.1/5perc/hp/org/cel/bgtr/str
- Horn
- 25 min
- 18th March 2026, Lindemansalen NMH, Oslo, Norway
Programme Note
BEYOND NEON – Post-Commercial Sound Sculptures for Horn and Large Orchestra
I was writing a large piano concerto at the time. I remember that the commission came so suddenly that I considered it to be a slight intrusion in my plans. You see, they wanted a horn-concerto. Nothing was further away from my thoughts. But the orchestras name I had heard about. There was some mix-up when it came to the conductor’s name, I remember. It said Merrimer. Who was that, I wondered. It couldn’t be Marriner, could it? The commissioners didn’t know. I started asking around – It was Marriner. My ears picked up and suddenly the commission was no intrusion at all. But a horn concerto? Hm,…
Then it struck me that Mahler had featured certain instruments in his scherzo-movements. The fifth symphony featured the horn. That was the solution. The soloist would sit in the orchestra and would function as a gateway for the listener into the orchestral sound-web.
I feel the need to tell you about some of the influences during the formative gestation of the piece. I decided to come to America and see the orchestra in action in its new hall. We here in Oslo also have just opened a new concert-hall, and also a new one in Bergen. This has created enormous interest and a dramatic upsurge in the quality of our orchestras – something which makes it such fun to write for a virtuoso band. I sensed the same attitude when hearing the Minnesota Orchestra.
I had been delving into two areas of music that were new to me and were opening all kinds of possibilities in my head. The one was film music, the other was funk-music. America has had since the war the most vibrant cultural scene in the world. It isn’t for nothing that when my students wish to express themselves in music, their "natural” musical language is the commercial industrial "folk”-music of the States. Well, the composers that interested me were the following – all Americans. BERNARD HERMANN the great film composer who pioneered "weighted” orchestral ensembles that give off weird and uniquely charactered sounds. JERRY GOLDSMITH – a composer who I rank among the finest alive today. His instrumentation is extraordinary in his combining subtle electronics with the traditional orchestra. I really do not understand that the great orchestras of America do not play this eminent music in the concert hall. I have certainly learned a great deal from studying it.
When it comes to funk-music, the great composers there are GEORGE CLINTON and NORMAN WHITFIELD. This culture with its humour, elegance and infectous good-spirits is among the most positive and serious contribution to world culture being made today, in my opinion. These composers manage a total synthesis of the American musical experience all fused together with stunning and scintillating virtuosity. I also went to America to experience his music first-hand. Well, I did. But there was also a marvelous trend in preserving the roots of this music, with shows like Aint Misbehavin and Sophisticated Ladies. The latter show bowled me for a loop. The elegance of the show, with its neon sets. The title for my piece gave itself: BEYOND NEON.
I also remembered my old composition professor at Indiana University who commented on my earliest compositions thus: "What are these Neanderthal harmonies!” I have never forgot that, hence also BEYOND NEAN.
Well, what about the piece itself. I planned it as a great orchestral scherzo. One large brilliant movement with orchestral virtuosity and good vibrations as its heart.
One of the main differences between contemporary music and all earlier art musics is that today we are able to create a music that is to be listened to laterally and not hierarchically. This means that one can let ones attention choose what it wants to focus on, instead of being forced to listen to one train of development. Funk-music does this by having a rigid rhythm track for those who wish to hop up and down, while the vocal track with its electronic embellishments afford quite a different listening experience.
In my music, this idea takes the shape of "formal counterpoint”. That means that whole pieces of music are being exposed simultaneously in counterpoint to one another. It differs from what Charles Ives sometimes did in that his pieces were often not co-ordinated with one another. Well, mine are. Great wedges of sound circle at different speeds, creating ever-changing new situations with a limited number of pieces.
The work starts with ten such pieces presented in isolation. In a way, these are like a preview to a full length film. These episodic "snap-shots” act as a kind of exposition. Then the piece itself really starts, the fragments beginning to revolve around one another in a series of superimpositions. The ten gestalts start slowly moving into a background position, as the solo horn moves forward in the sound picture. The horn comments or leads the listener through the sound-texture, having more in common with a jazz-soloists role than the traditional horn-concerto set-up. The soloist’s role is to come into a close foreground, thereby letting the listener "see” the orchestra as backdrop.
There are two large superimpositions separated by a cadenza for the listener’s breathing space (though certainly not the soloists). The ending is rather unusual in that the piece seems to flare up again and again just like a campfire that hasn’t been properly put out. Hope you like it!
Olav Anton Thommesen
I was writing a large piano concerto at the time. I remember that the commission came so suddenly that I considered it to be a slight intrusion in my plans. You see, they wanted a horn-concerto. Nothing was further away from my thoughts. But the orchestras name I had heard about. There was some mix-up when it came to the conductor’s name, I remember. It said Merrimer. Who was that, I wondered. It couldn’t be Marriner, could it? The commissioners didn’t know. I started asking around – It was Marriner. My ears picked up and suddenly the commission was no intrusion at all. But a horn concerto? Hm,…
Then it struck me that Mahler had featured certain instruments in his scherzo-movements. The fifth symphony featured the horn. That was the solution. The soloist would sit in the orchestra and would function as a gateway for the listener into the orchestral sound-web.
I feel the need to tell you about some of the influences during the formative gestation of the piece. I decided to come to America and see the orchestra in action in its new hall. We here in Oslo also have just opened a new concert-hall, and also a new one in Bergen. This has created enormous interest and a dramatic upsurge in the quality of our orchestras – something which makes it such fun to write for a virtuoso band. I sensed the same attitude when hearing the Minnesota Orchestra.
I had been delving into two areas of music that were new to me and were opening all kinds of possibilities in my head. The one was film music, the other was funk-music. America has had since the war the most vibrant cultural scene in the world. It isn’t for nothing that when my students wish to express themselves in music, their "natural” musical language is the commercial industrial "folk”-music of the States. Well, the composers that interested me were the following – all Americans. BERNARD HERMANN the great film composer who pioneered "weighted” orchestral ensembles that give off weird and uniquely charactered sounds. JERRY GOLDSMITH – a composer who I rank among the finest alive today. His instrumentation is extraordinary in his combining subtle electronics with the traditional orchestra. I really do not understand that the great orchestras of America do not play this eminent music in the concert hall. I have certainly learned a great deal from studying it.
When it comes to funk-music, the great composers there are GEORGE CLINTON and NORMAN WHITFIELD. This culture with its humour, elegance and infectous good-spirits is among the most positive and serious contribution to world culture being made today, in my opinion. These composers manage a total synthesis of the American musical experience all fused together with stunning and scintillating virtuosity. I also went to America to experience his music first-hand. Well, I did. But there was also a marvelous trend in preserving the roots of this music, with shows like Aint Misbehavin and Sophisticated Ladies. The latter show bowled me for a loop. The elegance of the show, with its neon sets. The title for my piece gave itself: BEYOND NEON.
I also remembered my old composition professor at Indiana University who commented on my earliest compositions thus: "What are these Neanderthal harmonies!” I have never forgot that, hence also BEYOND NEAN.
Well, what about the piece itself. I planned it as a great orchestral scherzo. One large brilliant movement with orchestral virtuosity and good vibrations as its heart.
One of the main differences between contemporary music and all earlier art musics is that today we are able to create a music that is to be listened to laterally and not hierarchically. This means that one can let ones attention choose what it wants to focus on, instead of being forced to listen to one train of development. Funk-music does this by having a rigid rhythm track for those who wish to hop up and down, while the vocal track with its electronic embellishments afford quite a different listening experience.
In my music, this idea takes the shape of "formal counterpoint”. That means that whole pieces of music are being exposed simultaneously in counterpoint to one another. It differs from what Charles Ives sometimes did in that his pieces were often not co-ordinated with one another. Well, mine are. Great wedges of sound circle at different speeds, creating ever-changing new situations with a limited number of pieces.
The work starts with ten such pieces presented in isolation. In a way, these are like a preview to a full length film. These episodic "snap-shots” act as a kind of exposition. Then the piece itself really starts, the fragments beginning to revolve around one another in a series of superimpositions. The ten gestalts start slowly moving into a background position, as the solo horn moves forward in the sound picture. The horn comments or leads the listener through the sound-texture, having more in common with a jazz-soloists role than the traditional horn-concerto set-up. The soloist’s role is to come into a close foreground, thereby letting the listener "see” the orchestra as backdrop.
There are two large superimpositions separated by a cadenza for the listener’s breathing space (though certainly not the soloists). The ending is rather unusual in that the piece seems to flare up again and again just like a campfire that hasn’t been properly put out. Hope you like it!
Olav Anton Thommesen