The Instrumental Concerto in Bent Sørensen’s Musical Output

Abstract

In the musical output of the modern Danish composer Bent Sørensen, the genre of the instrumental concerto occupies the leading position. The composer has written eight concertos, as well as a number of orchestral works in which particular solo instruments stand out. Based on their analysis, the article reveals the composer’s approach to this genre and the possibility of maintaining it. One of the characteristic features of Sørensen’s concerto works is the programmatic quality. The composer’s works are united by common themes of decay, disappearance, as well as reflection of musical culture, which leads to a saturation of the musical material by means of various stylistic allusions. The unified conceptual sphere gives rise to the phenomenon of connections between different musical works in the output of the Danish composer, while the stylistic juxtapositions, as well as the contrasts of the heterogeneous material in terms of timbre and texture embody the principle of dialogue, which is characteristic of the genre of the concerto. The programmatic quality determines the variety of compositional solutions of Sørensen’s concertos, in which connection, it is proposed to differentiate all of his compositions into two categories: one is represented by compositional models that preserve or revise the concerto form (for example, the Violin Concerto, the Clarinet Concerto, the Third Piano Concerto), and the other demonstrates models, each one focusing on an individual project (for example, the First Piano Concerto, the Accordion Concerto, the Harpsichord Concerto, etc.). In the latter case, elements of instrumental theater are often introduced into the concerto genre. One specific means of dramaturgy in Sørensen’s concerto opuses is the technique of transformation of the timbre and acoustics of the sound sphere, which involves changing the means of playing, the instruments or the sound sources (for example, a transition of the functioning of the orchestral musicians to singing and playing harmonicas in the Accordion Concerto, the transition from playing tremolo to creating sounds on sandpaper blocks in the composition Mignon — Papillons, the substitution of acoustic sound with tape recording in the Clarinet Concerto). The provided analysis allows us to arrive at the conclusion that the sphere of the instrumental concerto forms a single musical-semantic space in Sørensen’s musical output, which is endowed with its own personal characteristic features.

Keywords: contemporary music, Danish music, Bent Sørensen, instrumental concerto, traditional compositional model, individual project, transformation of timbre and acoustics within the sound sphere