Ketil Hvoslef Octopus Rex – Octopus Rex (per 8 violoncelli, 2010)
(b. Bergen, 19 July 1939)
Preface
Ketil Hvoslef is the youngest son of Norway’s pre-eminent symphonist Harald Sæverud (1897-1992) and Marie Hvoslef (1900-82). His birth coincided with the completion of Siljustøl, the great mansion in the outskirts of Bergen where the Sæverud family settled and where Harald Sæverud lived until his passing on 27 March 1992.
Being the son of a great composer, music was naturally very present during Hvoslef’s upbringing. He learned to play the piano and the viola and, in his teens, he became heavily involved in Bergen‘s jazz and pop music environment, becoming a member of what was, reportedly, Bergen‘s first rock band. Hvoslef (who retained the Sæverud surname until his 40th birthday, when he decided to adopt that of his mother) had, however, plans to become a painter and took serious steps in that direction. It was in the Bergen Art Academy that he met the painter Inger Bergitte Flatebø (1938 - 2008), who would become his wife and adopt the Sæverud surname.
With the birth of their first child, Trond Sæverud, in 1962, Hvoslef abandoned his dreams of becoming either a pop star or a painter and he took an organist‘s diploma at the Bergen Music Conservatoire. Upon finishing his studies, he was offered a position as theory teacher at the Conservatoire by its director, the legendary Gunnar Sævig (1924-69).
Hvoslef became a composer almost by accident. In his 25th year he composed a piano concertino for his own satisfaction. Shortly after, his father passed on to him a commission for a woodwind quintet he had no time or inclination to write. And after that he simply kept going. He had study periods in Stockholm (with Karl-Birger Blomdahl [1916-1968] and Ingvar Lindholm [1921-2017]) and in London (with Henri Lazarof [1932-2013] and Thomas Rajna [b. 1928]).
Since the 1970s Hvoslef has received a fairly steady stream of commissions and his work list counts with some 140 compositions to date. Hvoslef always enjoys a challenge and he has often written for unusual or seemingly „hopeless“ instrumental combinations, always using the limitations of the ensemble as a stimulant for his imagination. He has written for large orchestra, for a great variety of chamber ensembles and for solo instruments. He has so far composed twenty concertos and three operas.
Hvoslef was the Festival Composer of the Bergen International Festival in 1990 and has received several prizes, such as the Norwegian Composers‘ Society‘s „work of the year“ on four occasions (1978, 1980, 1985 and 1992) and TONO‘s Edvard Prisen in 2011.
Hvoslef‘s music is characterized by great transparency and by a conscious building of tension achieved by accumulating latent energy. He wants his listeners to lean forward and listen rather than sit back and be lulled into a rêverie. Listening to a Hvoslef composition is always an adventure: one never knows what to expect. He stretches sections of the music almost to breaking point and only then introduces a new idea. His music has a classical clarity and transparency and is therefore always easy to follow. Although his very personal and concentrated language is very much of its time, Hvoslef is not averse to using material that is recognizably tonal (such as major and minor triads) albeit always in a context that sets these familiar sounds in conflict with their surroundings. Rhythm is a very prominent aspect of Hvoslef’s music. Although the vast majority of his production is notated in 4/4 metre, his rhythmical patterns almost never conform to it, always favouring patterns of odd-numbered notes.
Ketil Hvoslef is, without a doubt, one of the greatest composers to emerge from Scandinavia in the past fifty years, as well as one of the truly original masters of our time.
Octopus Rex (per 8 celli)
Hvoslef writes: “Octopus Vulgaris is the Latin name of an octopus with eight tentacles. I have used the image of this octopus in two of my works, first an octet for eight flutes and later this octet for eight cellos. In both cases the idea has been to handle the instruments as one unified body. The cello octet was commissioned and premiered by eight cellists from the Hanover Radio Symphony Orchestra on December 5th 2010.
Oedipus Rex is a tragedy by Sophocles. It is also the title of an opera by Stravinsky. Since Octopus and Oedipus are so close to each other phonetically it was tempting to let my octet refer to one of my great heroes, Stravinsky.
When listening to my cello octet one will hardly find as many traces of Stravinsky as in my earlier works, - but Stravinsky might perhaps have written a similar octet in 2010, - but of course much, much better!”
It is significant that, for his two octets written for identical instruments, Hvoslef explored the upper end of the woodwind family (Octet for Flutes - 1978) and the lower end of the string family (Octopus Rex). This is, of course, coincidental, since both works were commissioned. The cello is, obviously, a more versatile instrument than the flute and it can cover virtually the entire range of the orchestra (bar the very lowest octave). An ensemble of eight cellos presents Hvoslef with a wide range of possibilities, which he is happy to exploit. Although, in keeping with his clearly stated memo, he mostly uses the ensemble as one body with many limbs (i.e. a cluster harmony moving in parallel motion, or as in the very opening, an orchestrated cacophony that becomes gradually more rarefied, and with increasingly longer pauses in between each utterance), he also opens up for moments of dialogue. Measures 60-76 are a good example: cellos 2 and 3, as a unit, converse with cello 1 in a good-natured game of imitation. All the while, the rest of the ensemble holds on to an obdurate 9/16 legato pattern that threatens to send the music tumbling down like a row of skittles. The ostinato breaks into fragments and now morphs into a 9/8 pattern consisting of three 16th notes (one and then two) separated by silences (mm. 77 and ff.). On top of this, cellos 1-4 unfold a diatonic two-part chorale with notes of equal value. The first eight notes of the melody here look an awful lot like a direct quotation from the second movement of Beethoven‘s Moonlight Sonata. I asked Hvoslef about this: „It is entirely coincidental, and another example of my uncommonly bad memory (which also allows me far greater freedom than my colleagues in using whatever seems suitable)“
After this, repeated notes become the favoured game. Hvoslef being Hvoslef, he makes sure that each voice repeats its single notes at different rates and that those which repeat the fastest are subjected to dynamic processes (crescendo or diminuendo). In this way he keeps the listener constantly guessing and in a state of keen anticipation. It is hard to think of any other composer who can extract so much music out of repeated notes. Eventually one single voice (cello 1) is left to carry on with the repeated notes (mm. 132 and ff.) while cellos 5-8 develop a passage made of gloomy minor triads in the lowest register. Cellos 2 and 3 will have none of it, however, and from measure 143 they engage in a brief game of musical ping pong. All the same, the dismal mood takes the upper hand and, while cello 1 continues repeating its high G, oblivious of its surroundings, cellos 2-5 carry the earlier chorale forward, but now in nervous and unstable tremolos on top of a long held drone on the open bottom string (mm. 156-182)
Quite unexpectedly all the voices start, one by one, playing a 14/8 descending pizzicato figure that, somehow, mirrors the ascending cacophony of the beginning of the piece. From here there is only one way forward towards the ending where, again, all the players join forces in moving as one, headlong towards the final unison bottom D.
At the time of this writing Octopus Rex is planned to be recorded for the eighth and final volume of Hvoslef‘s complete chamber music with the Norwegian record company LAWO.
Ricardo Odriozola, October 5th 2018.