Bint [1979/1980]

I consider this work my first ‘mature’ piece. I had written a number of pieces before it, but I see those as typical study works of a young composition student. I also wrote Bint as a student; the writing process was extraordinarily difficult, but suddenly something clicked. It’s quite a peculiar story, actually. For most of 1979, I worked on Bint—the group Hoketus had asked me for a piece. This would be the third piece after Louis Andriessen’s work, the piece Hoketus, after which the group was named. The second piece was Tam Tam by Diderik Wagenaar, from 1978/1979. For my piece, I could use ten musicians; two keyboard instruments were removed from the group because Andriessen no longer wanted to play, and the number had to remain even, of course, because of the two identical groups into which the ensemble was divided. This put a lot of pressure on me, as I wanted my piece to stand alongside these two works. The structure of the ensemble was very demanding, due to the mirror setup and the unique instrumentation. At a certain point, I had enough material and decided to go over it with the group. They played a few short fragments, and we discussed the technical problems. There were hardly any, and the group found the material very promising. However, when I got back home to my desk, I was quite depressed; I couldn’t ‘hear’ a piece, just material. I decided to organize a round of reflection, not only a conversation with my composition teachers, Jan van Vlijmen and Louis Andriessen, but also with other teachers, such as Diderik Wagenaar and Dick Raaijmakers, as well as with some of my fellow students.

After completing my list, I sat in my study, pondering how to proceed. I understood the essence of the problem; all the material sounded good, I had heard that, but it didn’t lead to a consistent piece. Suddenly, I got a vision—I call it a vision and not a dream, because I was awake. I saw a group of about twelve monks in gray-brown habits, walking away from me at a slow but steady pace; I saw their backs, not their faces, if those were even visible since they wore hoods. They walked between enormous columns, the tops of which I couldn’t see because they were so tall. As a result, I couldn’t tell if these columns were inside a vast cathedral or somewhere outside. The vision lasted only a few seconds, but it immediately gave me a crystal-clear solution to my structural problem. I knew exactly which material I would use, and I discarded the vast majority, no matter how beautiful those fragments were on their own. I also knew that the structure would be based on two unequal clocks, grounded in the aforementioned chords, and with a metallic sound. Now, I only had to write it down, which went relatively quickly. In January 1980, the piece was finished. The vision provided me with a practical solution, but not a theoretical answer. It would take years before I gained insight into that. The fact that the columns became clocks is, of course, anecdotal.

The film is a recording of the farewell concerts of Hoketus in Frascati, Amsterdam, 1986.

Gerard Bouwhuis, Cees van Zeeland – piano
Paul Koek, Hans van der Meer – percussion
Huib Emmer, Jeanette Yanikian – bass guitar
Peter van Bergen, Jan-Willem van der Ham – saxophone
Patricio Wang, Ricardo Mendeville – pan flute
Piet Nieuwint – sound engineering