Hans Roosenschoon
The Dutch-born (1952 - ) composer Hans Roosenschoon has studied music in South Africa, and in England.
Orchestral works form the larger part of his oeuvre for which he has received numerous commissions from all of the most significant commissioning bodies in South Africa, and which has been performed regularly throughout the country to wide public acclaim. His discography includes recordings for the SA Broadcasting Corporation's transcription service, as well as commercial recordings of his orchestral, choral, electronic and chamber music.
One of the international performances worth mentioning is the orchestral study Iconography (1983) which was chosen for the "World Music Days" festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Warsaw, where it was performed in 1992 by the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.
However, Roosenschoon’s music has been heard in the USA, in several West- and East European countries, Australia and in the UK. Clouds Clearing (1994), performed by the SA National Youth Orchestra in Aberdeen and Glasgow, Scotland, as well as at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, has had several broadcasts on BBC Radio to date. The work was also performed by the Kristiansand Chamber Orchestra of Norway, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta of England, and the Algarve Orchestra of Portugal.
A number of his choral works were performed by South African choirs with much success at international competitions. Firebowl (1980) was selected as the best South African choral work sung at the Fourth World Symposium on Choral Music held in Sydney, and is included on a CD featuring 26 Choirs from all over the world. It was also presented to many audiences abroad by the Camarata Chamber Choir of Stockholm.
His string quartet, To Open A Window (1995), was performed by the Chillingirian String Quartet of England at the Stellenbosch Festival in 1995. Furthermore, it was broadcast on Norwegian Radio, as well as on Bavarian Radio, channel Bayern 4 Klassik, in a performance by the Odeion String Quartet of Bloemfontein
Other international performances worth mentioning are Timbila (1985), performed by the Goldsmith's Youth Orchestra in London, and Mantis (1988), performed by the Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra of Chicago. More recently Sinfonietta (1976) and Aurora (1998) were performed in Romania.
In the face of a changing stylistic orientation, creating projects which endeavour to bridge the gap between Western and African aesthetics, as is evident in his most prominent work of this genre, Timbila, for instance, will remain Roosenschoon’s focal point. In this regard, the two chapters he contributed to the book Composing the Music of Africa, edited by Macolm Floyd of the UK, continues to be a frame of reference in expressing his own credo and departure point for his creative output.
Hans Roosenschoon has also made important contributions to cultural life in other areas - as a broadcaster and music producer, as an arts administrator, a promoter of South African music, an adjudicator at competitions, and, for some time, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern African Music Rights Organization (SAMRO). In 2004 Roosenschoon was visiting professor in composition at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg. In 2007 he presented seminars on his music at the universities of Bristol and York in the UK.
From 1998 – 2006 professor Roosenschoon was the Chair in the Department of Music, as well as director of the Conservatoire at Stellenbosch University. During his term as Chair a number of important projects have been brought to fruition successfully of which the bi-lateral academic exchange agreements with the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo are perhaps the most significant. Currently he is professor of Composition at Stellenbosch University.
For more information on the composer and his works, consult his website:
http://www.roosenschoon.co.za.
Reviews:
"On this evidence, however, it is those strong, seductive continental voices - Berio, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, and Stockhausen - which have lingered longest in his mind. And it takes musical character of no little determination to rise above the pale imitation of any or all of these". (Whittall, Arnold. June 1986. GRAMOPHONE, Vol. 64, No. 757, London)
"Of the African-inspired works, Timbila is probably Roosenschoon's masterpiece. The composer sees the work as a fusion of traditional African music played on original instruments and the timbre-texture writing of his earlier orchestral pieces". "However the listener might perceive these African works, they incorporate all of Roosenschoon's best qualities: an innate sense of structure, rhythmic interest, sensitivity to colouristic effect and a strong lyric tendency". (May, James. 1992. HANS ROOSENSCHOON in Morton, Brian & Collins, Pamela (ed.), CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS, St James Press, Chicago & London)
"You can tell Roosenschoon has an acute musical imagination from the way a small detail as a ticking percussion figure is allowed to grow and to engulf the entire texture. There's an emotional directness about this music that is often naive. But unlike so much cross-cultural music it is never pseudo-naïve". (Hewett, Ivan. b/c 13 and 17 June, 1992. New Releases Morgan, Nick (ed.), in SATURDAY REVIEW, BBC RADIO 3)
"His music is characterized by highly skilled orchestration, rhythmic, thematic and harmonic transformation and development, and textural juxtapositions, frequently involving mixtures of avant-garde and conventional techniques. His predilection for pre-existing popular melodies, themes or compositional fragments, employed both as quotations and in the service of new and original ideas and structures, underscores his music's accessibility and popularity, despite complex designs and intellectual musical thought processes". (Viljoen, Nicol. 2001. HANS ROOSENSCHOON in: Sadie, Stanley and Tyrell, John (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, Vol. 21 London)
“Although he does not regard himself as an African composer, some of his music became more African inspired with the inevitable fusion of these elements into his tonal language. In many of his orchestral works, sources from Western music literature are often combined with African elements, which are not treated as themes to elaborate on in the traditional sense, but rather as organic musical objects being developed and displayed on different levels resulting in an easier accessibility of the music to the listeners, and in this way overriding to a certain extent the inherent complexity of compositional structure and design”. (Geldenhuys, Daniël G. 2005. ROOSENSCHOON, HANS in: Blume, Friedrich and Finscher, Ludwig (ed.). Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Personenteil 14, Bärenreiter-Verlag, Stuttgart)
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