HERMESensemble - Koen Kessels

Anyone who listens to traditional gagaku music cannot avoid coming to the curious conclusion that this music, despite being over a thousand years old, sounds contemporary to our Western ears. Similarities between traditional gagaku and modern Western music can be found in their static harmony and form, as well as in their autonomy of rhythm and percussion. Despite these common elements, the confrontation between the two traditions remains complex. First is the difference in frequency level - 430 Hz for gagaku compared to 440 Hz in the West - and the resulting differences in interval ratios. The ensemble is also different: gagaku is performed without a conductor, in a usually slow yet extremely free tempo akin to an extreme form of rubato. Furthermore, all elements must be set down in the traditional form of notation specific to gagaku. Consequently, D'Haene will have composed his work as a metaphor of sound, based on coexistence and interaction with Japanese modal-harmonic thinking on the one hand and Western contemporary atonal and spectral styles on the other. An adventurous and flexible attitude is an obvious necessity for this new method of ensemble playing, for both the composer and the musicians from the East and from the West. As an introduction to the last piece, which will be performed here for the first time ever, we will hear an earlier work by Frederic D'Haene (b. 1961) and a traditional work for gagaku orchestra.