2018-2019 | 22' | cello, piano and organ

cōnflāri ['to be fused together'] is a piece in which three contrasting timbres (cello, piano and organ) try to fuse their different rhythms, intonation and melodies into one instrument. They embody a music that was once whole, but has fallen apart, like shrapnel.

As such, this piece is best classified as musical prose. It does not seek meaning in every gesture, like a poem would, but rather strains to find any meaning at all . An extreme sadness permeates its material, as the three protagonists try to fuse together ever more, never quite getting there, until they - grotesquely and artificially - do, petrifying into a terrifying noise.

This piece drifts on the three instruments having a different physicality (the air for the organ, the hammers for the piano, the strings for the cello) and assigning each a different kind of intonation and rhythm. It explores 23-limit Just Intonation intervals, although it's still firmly rooted in 12-tone equal temperament (as the piano and organ are, of course, tempered instruments).

In the third movement, the following text appears:

                         cinis pulvisque cumulant in robustam molem
                         cuius construximus muros ut nos tueantur atros dum
                         in formam fluit glarea rara et vix lapidescit
                         in monumentum ubi meminimus robur nostrum

cōnflāri was written for Doris Hochscheid (cello), Frans van Ruth (piano) and Gonny van der Maten (organ) who toured churches all across the Netherlands throughout 2019. Its creation was made possible with the support of the Dutch Performing Arts Fund.