Annual List of Works : Gaudeamus Foundation Contemporary Music Center
 ~385K |
Title
Sex
Composer
Dante Oei, (1973, Netherlands) Van Oldenbarneveldtstraat 72-1, 1052 KE Amsterdam, Netherlands, 31-20-7760967, 31-6-15401724
Genre
choir
Instrumentation
SATB (4x4x4x4)
Year of composition
2007
Duration
6 minutes
Place of premiere performance
Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (large hall)
Date of premiere performance
2007-09-04
Performers
the Netherlands Vocal Laboratory
Score
Publisher : own printing
d.oei3@chello.nl, kalvos.org/oeidante.html
Recording
Record company: Concertzender, The Netherlands, concert.post@concertzender.nl, www.concertzender.nl
Programme note
The piece sex (3), written in 2007 at the request of the Netherlands Vocal Laboratory, is an arrangement of sex (2) for clarinet and cello, written in 2006 for the Barton Workshop ensemble, which in turn was an arrangement of sex for clarinet, violin and viola, composed that same year for the New York Miniaturist Ensemble. In the first two versions the instrumentalists coordinated their timing by having one instrument play some notes or groups of notes in a single breath or bow, while the other instrument(s) placed their sounds within this time span. Hence the title, as the music results from a combination of physical and psychological boundaries striving for balance. In the choral setting I translated the difference between bowing and breathing into the difference between one solo soprano who is in charge of the timing, versus the other four voices as a choir and conductor who control notes or groups of notes.
The music is set to a poem by Petronius in Satyricon:
Qualis nox fuit illa, di deaeque,
quam mollis torus! Haesimus calentes
et transfudimus hinc et hinc labellis
errantes animas. Valete, curae
mortales. Ego sic perire coepi.
Ah God, ah God, that night when we two clung/So close, our hungry lips/Transfused each into each our hovering souls,/Mortality’s eclipse …’.
(translation, Helen Waddell)
Composer Biography
As a pianist Dante Oei has premiered pieces by composers including Tom Johnson, Clarence Barlow, Samuel Vriezen and Anthony Fiumara. He has recorded Tom Johnson’s Symmetries (with Samuel Vriezen, for Karnatic Lab Records), works by Rozalie Hirs for the Attacca Babel label, and by Philip Corner for New World Records, with the Barton Workshop ensemble. He has given concerts in Paris, Miami, Rome, Ghent, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna and many other places in the Netherlands and abroad. He is currently working on a solo CD featuring piano music by Richard Ayres, Clarence Barlow, Mario Cesa, Tom Johnson and Walter Zimmermann. Oei’s compositions have been performed by ensembles and musicians such as Arnold Marinissen, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Marcel Worms, Moritz Eggert, de ereprijs orchestra and The Barton Workshop. Currently he is composing for the Motion Ensemble (Canada) and De Volharding orchestra. As a composer and pianist he is a member of the international composers group Wandelweiser, which presents a monthly concert series in Amsterdam dedicated to music by Jürg Frey, Eva-Maria Houben, Antoine Beuger, Manfred Werder, Taylan Susam and other composers related to this group. Oei lives and works in Amsterdam.