The Never Released Album - Update

In one of the comments below a listener tells he hears a sort of circle of life in For You Have Delivered My Soul. This is amazingly accurate. Although the movements have different origins, they share somehow a binding theme. The circle of life and death, being a child, loosing your parents, getting children, watch them grow up, accepting the idea that you’re way more than halfway….

The Complete FYHDMS consists of 6 movements

1 Prologue  

Which is actually the first minute or so from the original FYHDMS. The first complete drafts of this music I wrote during long days and nights in the hospital, for about a week when my father slowly died. It wasn’t as sad as the music suggests. My father had survived during decades all kinds of difficult heart surgery. So we were sort of lucky he became 75 or so anyway.

In the original version I used a psalm melody, one of the favourite of my father. In those days – around 1994 – I studied composition, trying to combine tonal and atonal techniques, in a sort of circular way, based upon techniques developed by Ton de Leeuw.

The music became part of a 4 movement symphonic piece that was performed 3 times by an amateur student orchestra.

In the next 20 years I returned now and than to the music, slowly eliminating the atonal elements. In the end I also skipped the original melody, resulting in this version.

2 Cantus (not in this 30 minute version)

Cantus was a commission from the medieval music ensemble Super Librum, with a very, very old text in a very, very old Frisian language. Apart from the original strange line-up, there is a version for large ensemble and a string based version. Still missing is the recording of the vocals. My name is an old Frisian name, so it’s nice to incorporate lyrics from my medieval ancestors in this circle of life

3 Five to Seven AM

To be honest, this movement has nothing to do with the general theme. Written during a period when I woke up very early every day to compose between 5 and 7 AM, hence the title. The piece is result from some compositional experiments and is completely based upon a simple three-note motive.

4 The Exclusion Principle

This is one of those pieces that wanders around for years in all kind of stages and variants. It was actually mend for The Dreams of Wolfgang Pauli and it is still part of those sketches. Wolfgang Pauli was a theoretical physicist in the first half of the last century. Why I want to make an album about his dreams is another story, but I like the title, because it relates a bit to my feelings of isolation in my small and quiet hometown.

5 For You Have Delivered my Soul

Now the complete movement, see Prologue

6 I can do this (not in this 30 minute version)

You may know this!  It’s on Summary, the free album in a not fully finished version. It is a sort of light-weighted conclusion of the cycle: “Composing stuff? Yeah, I have my hick-ups, but yes, I can do it. I think.