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Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne Performs Works by Jonathan Harvey

Nov. 26, 2013

Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne Performs Works by Jonathan Harvey

On December 5, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne performs a tribute to Jonathan Harvey at McGill University with a performance of his groundbreaking work, Bhakti, along with his String Quartet No. 2.

A 50-minute work for chamber ensemble and electronics, Bhakti was commissioned by IRCAM and premiered by Ensemble InterContemporain in 1982. Bhatki is composed in twelve short movements, with thirty-six subsections. Harvey describes the work as follows:

The musical syntax is symmetrical around a central axis. The ear is unconsciously attracted to hear the harmony not as dissonant over a fundamental bass but as floating free from bass functions and yet rigorously controlled. The tape is composed largely of sounds drawn from the instrumental ensemble transformed and mixed by computer. It has many functions: dialogue, transformation, memory, anticipation, ‘simultaneous translation’ and of reaching beyond the instrumental scale to a more universal dimension. A quotation from the Rig Veda is appended at the end of each movement. These Sanskrit hymns were written some 4000 years ago. They are keys to a transcendent consciousness.

String Quartet No. 2 was commissioned by the Arditti Quartet, who gave the premiere performance at the 1989 Ars Musica festival in Brussels. Of the one-movement work, Harvey noted that String Quartet No. 2 is “generated entirely by the innocent unison melody which occurs near the beginning,” with the structure of that melody shaping the piece as a whole.

Visit www.fabermusic.com for further details on Jonathan Harvey.

Jonathan Harvey
Bhakti (1982)
for chamber ensemble and electronics
fl(pic).ob(ca).cl(Ebcl).bcl-hn.tpt(ptpt).tbn-perc-pno(glsp)-hp-str(3vn.va.vc)
50’

String Quartet No. 2 (1989)
16’

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