Run Quiet is a piece about domestic violence. It is a charged, heavy subject that takes a lot of patience and care to safely translate into a theatre piece. It is based on Dalton's personal experience and accounts from domestic abuse victims he has talked to. Due to the delicate theme and intimacy this has been a very complex piece to compose properly and to do it justice. This portfolio entry is a bit more elaborate than the others and I hope it's an interesting peek into one of my processes.
Split in Half
We developed Run Quiet in two parts, due to the pandemic we started our process in 2021. During this first research phase I composed for an entire week in the Krijn Boon studio with Dalton and the dancers. I translated his exercises into sound by using voice, music and thematically relevant foley.
(2021) Tegen de Muur, demo from the first sketchweek
For "Tegen de Muur" I used sounds of knocks on wood and a heavy wave folding bass. This piece is supposed to evoke the inner pressures of being in a violent toxic relationship. It is quite conceptual also in it's execution. In the latter part of the composition there are some improvised vocals that read "as long as it doesn't come in". Having this narrative approach in theatre music can be quite tricky but we will return to that a bit later.
Photo: Amanda Harput
Photo: Amanda Harput
Op de Huid
(2021) Op de Huid, demo from the first period
The little gem from that week in 2021 was "Op de Huid" a long, abstract exploration featuring mostly sampled and mangled acoustic elements. The vocal adlib on the recording was performed during the rehearsals. While tracking and improvising the microphone picked up Adam playing a scene which can be heard from around 5:35. Such lucky accidents sometimes happen during rehearsal and it makes for quite a beautiful element in the score.
There isn't that much story in the vocal apart from the scene bleeding into the microphone. But just like the previous example it is very evocative. Which, in some contexts would be desirable like when rehearsing, having an emotionally rich music is a blessing as a dancer. Getting lost in a sonic world and finding ways to express yourself physically. Unfortunately, at the end of the road, we make art for an audience. As a composer I don't want to force the audience to feel a specific way. The dance should direct the music, not the other way around.
A Sudden Lack of Fragility
So 2022 came around and we were struck with a problem. The music was too charged and we weren't making a movie but a dance piece. There were some great tracks to dance to but none that left enough space for the humanity and fragility of the dancers. All the pieces of music put the choreography in an emotionally charged aesthetic bubble which made it hard to connect with on a human level. I made a lot of attempts making pieces that had a longer time to gradually build into violence or to crawl under your skin in a more subtle or abstract way.
The Loop
(2022) The Loop, Demo #5
One of Dalton's concepts within the piece is recurring and exacerbating violence. We called that "The Loop" which was at the time of development the most important part of the piece. For two weeks I developed different themes and variations for this loop that all had different characters and levels of intensity. After two full rewrites I landed on the piece above. Which as it stands, is pretty cool. We used it for a bit but it didn't completely hit the spot. Just like most of my other concepts and works. I just kept on doing too much.
Photo: Amanda Harput
Montage and a Paradigm Shift
(2022) Atmos 1
(2022) Atmos 5 in G minor
The week before the montage we considered doing the piece in silence. We might have actually tried during one of our final runs to run some scenes in silence on purpose. But it really needed something. During a Saturday rehearsal I decided I would return to where we originally started in 2021. Just playing live to whatever was happening in the scene. I churned out quite a few pieces that changed the direction of the soundtrack completely. There were a few key factors at pay here. Monophonic elements coming together to form harmony instead of regular chord instruments. And noise, wether it's red, white or blue. Noise makes the silence less important.
I also find that noise is a great space for little darlings or easter eggs to live in that only the composer knows about. In the first piece above here there is a noise track; 'What is that noise?' You might ask, well, it's a Powerball, one of those early 2010's tools to train your wrists.
I could write a lot of conceptual foundation on why multitracking monophonic melodic lines is motivated by the interpersonal narratives that happen on stage but I'm not going to do that. There is some poetry to the sonic key I found that late in the process but more importantly, we found a way to finish the piece.
Photo: Amanda Harput
Cut the Crap
(2022, montage week) Liefde for Jefta and Wennah
So it's a week before the premiere. The piece is done but the music is in shambles. Not a single cue that I came with that week ended up in the final performance. (No, this is not a request to future collaborators to only hire me for the final week of the process.) All the days kind of melted into one and and so did the revelations. Just playing drones didn't cut it so I nuanced my way into the score, scrambled a lot of single elements together from the 2022 process.
I ended up with a very minimalistic score that could at times pop out and be evocative without being abrasive. But mostly a score that whispers and makes the audience hear the silence and be with the choreography.
(2022) Levenloos, the final harmonic part of the piece
Choreography:
Dalton Jansen
Dancers:
Wennah Wilkers
Giovanni Pisas
Evelien Jansen
Jefta Tanate
Light design:
Jasper Nijholt
Music:
Tom van Wee
Assistance/coaching
Jeroen Janssen
Anne Maike Mertens
Zarah Bracht