Commissioned by: Ives Ensemble, with financial support from the Netherlands Fund for the Creation of Music
First Performance: Ives Ensemble, 2003, De Rode Hoed, Amsterdam
Instrumentation: flute + harp, clarinet, trombone, percussion + cello, harpsichord, piano & solo percussion.
Duration: ca.17’-30’
Special Features: performance requires individual stopwatches

Score samples

Info/Program note:
Consisting only of separate parts, 6 Parts for 7 Players (2003) is the first piece I wrote without a score. It was written for the Ives Ensemble with the specific purpose of being unconducted and follows some of Ives' ideas about simultaneous, non-synchronized events. The piece consists of 6 or 7 linear parts for 1 or 2 musicians per part. Several of these parts also have a free instrumentation, such as Percussion 1, Percussion 2 and the non-obligatory 'harmony part'. Each part has a differing number of entries and follows its' own, immediately discernible logic. The musicians enter and exit in a pre-ordained, symmetrical order (the first one in being the last one out, parallel to the symmetrical chord and patterning of the harpsichord part) and the work is glued together through a kind of ‘ringmaster’ - in the person of the percussionist – who plays an extremely demanding and steadily expanding figure at beginning, middle and end of the piece.

Although the work has mostly been performed at its minimum duration of ca. 17’, longer versions of the piece, with more ‘white’ in between the individual entries, are also possible.