Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen - Crossing Lines for trombone, accordion, violin and cello (1998)
(b. 11. January 1964, Oslo)
First performance:
Bodø, Novemeber 10th 2001
Jostein Stalheim, members of Bodø Sinfonietta
Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen was born in Oslo but grew up in Lofoten Northern Norway.
He took his education as a trumpeter in 1986-1990 at the Bergen Music Conservatoire - now Grieg Academy - where he also studied music pedagogy. In 1989-1990 he was in the composition class of Mogens Christensen.
From 1990 to 1994 Aagaard-Nilsen taught contemporary music at the same institution. For two years he studied mathematics and computer science at the Bergen University.
He was the director of Bergen's Autunnale Festival also in the early 1990s. Since 2004 he has been artistic director of Bergen's Brasswind Festival, which focuses on new music for all kinds of wind ensembles. In 2006 he founded the concert series Avgarde together with Ketil Hvoslef, Jostein Stalheim and Knut Vaage. The series, which is still running today, is an arena for local musicians and composers. Aagaard-Nilsen works as conductor of various school and amateur orchestras, and also as a teacher at the Manger Folk High School in Northern Hordaland. Manger Musikklag, the brass band from the same town, acts as the "house orchestra" in the Brasswind Festival.
Aagaard-Nilsen regards composing as a form of social activity. He writes:
'Composers (and artists in general) play an important role in modern society. We are competing for attention with increasingly powerful media.
Art can do what commercial media cannot: it finds its way under the skin, as imprints of experiences. This aspect alone makes it imperative
to keep going'.
Aagaard-Nilsen's music has been described as direct and impulsive. Nature and visual aspects are important sources of inspiration and the music often has a narrative quality. His language is free-tonal, with melodies and harmonies taking on the roles of objects that are open for development.
His wide-encompassing work with amateurs and youngsters has lent great versatility to his music. He is adept at writing music that is both intricate and accessible.
Although he is rightly recognized for his music for wind ensembles, he has also written for sinfonietta, symphony orchestra and a variety of chamber ensembles and solo instruments. He recently (February 2024) enjoyed great success in Meiningen, Germany, with his first opera “Genspenster” based on Ibsen’s play “Ghosts” (Gjengangere).
Aagaard-Nilsen writes the following about Crossing Lines:
The work was commissioned by Jostein Stalheim to be played with his Nordic Quartet. Stalheim also led the first performance in Bodø.
The piece is built around four different solo features, one from each instrument. The material of these solos is transformed and developed towards an ending where it all disappears “into the night”.
The Nordic Quartet to which Aagaard-Nilsen refers was a one-time project. The group included Stalheim (accordion), Jesper Juul (trombone), Ricardo Odriozola (violin) and John Ehde (cello). They made a studio recording of the work in Bergen that is, as yet, unreleased.
In accordance with his stated intentions, Aagaard-Nilsen chose an “objective” title for this piece. It is easy to hear the way the lines from the four instruments indeed cross one another throughout the work, at times creating rather tense situations. In the beginning, however, all instruments contribute to establish a nine-note row presented by the accordion:
..........
picture 1
----------
The row, in different transpositions and permutations, will permeate much of the work.
The pitch classes of the row are as follows:
...............
picture 2
...............
The missing notes, C and C sharp/D flat, discretely introduce themselves in measure 27 (accordion and violin), remaining available for the duration of the work. B natural proves to be a recalcitrant participant in the piece. It makes a fleeting appearance in the trombone part in measure 128 and reappears, again very discretely on the accordion harmonies a few times between measures 168 and 184, never to be heard again for the rest of the work. It also features, in a prominent and meaningful harmonic role (an enharmonically notated minor ninth) in mm. 148-151, as you will see below.
It seems wholly appropriate to have the accordion introduce the core material of the piece. Even allowing for the presence of a potentially overpowering trombone, the accordion is the instrument in this unlikely combo that seems to dominate the proceedings. Its presence appears, at times, almost domineering. It lends a somewhat forbidding edge to the piece. Every so often, when the other instruments seem to want to engage in playful interplay, the long held background chords of the accordion seem intent on not allowing the game to break the rules of a tacitly enforced code of behaviour. This unwillingness to put up with frivolity is best exemplified in the irascible repeated chords of mm. 98-102. The trombone – the accordion’s only potential contestant for predominance in the ensemble – is muted for most of the piece, only allowed to play with continuously open sounds between measures 132 and 160.
Truth be told, all instruments are given their time in the spotlight, limited as it may be. However, whereas there certainly is beauty and excitement – albeit of a spasmodic kind – joy does not seem to be on the agenda. Crossing Lines is a serious piece of music. It would seem the instruments are searching for some kind of elemental enjoyment but they appear to be hampered by the circumstances. A deeply built-in frustration can be heard in the scratch tones of the strings and the low flutter tones of the trombone. A particularly poignant moment occurs in measures 148-152: the group manages to coalesce into a beautiful, if mournful, Bb13-9 chord, only to be sabotaged by the accordion’s low A natural. The strings respond impotently with irritated scratch notes.
For all its earnestness the music also finds room for sonic oases, such as the sequences between mm. 128 and 133 and mm. 165 and 189. The work unfolds in a remarkably organic manner. The instruments hand over motifs to one another. At times they move in the same direction. At others one instrument moving upwards meets another moving downwards. The wispy coda – m. 210 to the end – features the accordion in a carefree mood, throwing its dainty ascending figures upwards “into the night” as the composer expresses it. These rising figures have been a common feature of the whole work. In the end, with a distant cello watching guardedly from a distance, the accordion allows itself the enjoyment it seems to have denied its playing partners throughout the piece.
All the above is, naturally, only one listener’s interpretation of the music. Future performers and listeners of the work are free to enter and understand the music in any manner they may find meaningful. The work appears on the 2003 CD ‘Singing Landscape’ on the Euridice label. The entire CD is devoted to Aagard-Nilsen’s music.
Following the lead of his older colleague Ketil Hvoslef, Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen has, in Crossing Lines, masterfully found balance and coherence within a rather unusual combination of instruments.
I am indebted to Jostein Stalheim for providing the registration symbols in the accordion part on this edition.
Ricardo Odriozola, 25. March 2024
German preface not available ...