Ichnofossils for viola, piano and electronics was written and composed by Oscar van Dillen, January – April 2024.

On the music of Ichnofossils

Electronic sound projection should immerse the audience ideally, so should come not from the front, not from the stage, but from the sides or back to create a sound surrounding and immersing the audience, to which as a counterpoint the performers, facing the audience, from their own place, mix into the music.

The four lines representing the timing of the main electronic layers each represent sounds in registers varying from low (bottom line) to high (top line). This notation is provided to facilitate correct timing by ear; no click track will be provided, and this music must be performed by skilled hearing.

To still further facilitate this, rough character indications are given at the start of the electronic sounds at their respective score places. There is however far more happening in the electronic music than its score here suggests; the performers must take great care to learn to listen to its ongoing heartbeat tempo of 54 bpm, because despite polyrhythms, wobbles and fluctuations, and there being more than one simultaneously present tempo, it can be precisely heard and followed by ear; its audio conducting the performance, in a deeply and primordially musical way.

Composed for Ellyne Wieringa and Kardelen Buruk in 2024 for their Badings project, the backbone of the harmony of this 12 minute work contains a cryptic reference to the 11 letters of that composer’s name, as if a hidden geological musical layer. To find them, one should start looking for the tone letters.

In the wake of the fact that Badings was a geoligist and paleontologist, two of van Dillen’s fascinations since childhood, the piece is composed in layers of time, and of rhythms, a.o. represented in the clock-like ticking sounds used. The title Ichnofossils refers to trace fossils, which are fossils of life’s activities without fossilized bodily remains. Some of these, called Helminthoidea Labyrinthica from the Late Cretaceous, remind of the more linear compositions of van Dillen’s own visual art, and have been a special inspiration for this work.

“Not only in the geological record but also in our life we are surrounded by fossils of activities of the deceased that once we knew, a fact which especially came to mind when a small find of my deceased father’s papers and sculptural models came down to me not long ago. The traces of his pen on paper are like Ichnofossils of his life to me now, allowing me to identify (handwriting) and analyse (content) in some depth parts of the living person I once knew.”

In this sense, the title refers to more fossils than those set in stone, I am sure everyone cherishes some.

Interview

An short interview with van Dillen can be seen here:

Premiere and concerts 2024

• 19 mei 20.30u, DEN HAAG – BARTHKAPEL, Brouwersgracht 2K, 2512 ER -> TICKETS
• 23 mei 20.30u, DELFT – RIETVELD THEATER, HAL015, Schieweg 15B, 2627 AN -> TICKETS
• 24 mei 20.30u, AMSTERDAM – AMSTELKERK, Amstelveld 10, 1017 JD -> TICKETS
• 30 mei 20.30u, ROTTERDAM – BERGSINGELKERK, Bergsingel 150, 3037 GM -> TICKETS
• 2 juni 15.00u, DEN HAAG – THEATER DE REGENTES, Weimarstraat 63, 2562 GR -> TICKETS
• 28 augustus, WEESP (Grachtenfestival) – tba

Sheet music

Sheet music available at Donemus.

See also

Ellyne Wieringa’s website on the series Badings belicht