Rain, for two pianos and tape

Well-regarded as one of Europe’s pioneering voices in electronic music, Ton Bruynèl (1934-98) was born in Utrecht. In 1956 he graduated from Utrecht Conservatory, where he had studied with Wolfgang Wijdeveld, a former pupil of Bartók. As composition was not a regular course in the conservatory, Bruynèl took private lessons and then opened his own studio—the first composition studio in The Netherlands. Rather than following contemporary experiments in atonal music, young Bruynèl was attracted to French musique concrète. This style looks to the sounds of the everyday world as foundations for composition. Bruynèl found his niche—and his voice—in the intersections between “found” music and electronically processed sounds. The effect of altered, process-oriented compositions resembles what mainstream groups like Tangerine Dream were doing in the mid-1970s.
Bruynèl’s abiding interests in color and timbre have meant that purely electronic works are not for him. As he wonderfully puts it, “Pure electronic music is fine, but you do find yourself looking at your shoelaces all evening.” Bruynèl’s most successful works, including Rain (1982), bring together acoustic instruments and manipulations of recorded natural sounds. In this ten-minute work, the actual sound of rain is audible at times, but it also becomes the catalyst for sounds manufactured via tape loops. As Bruynèl explains, “The sounds of rain were recorded on tape and transferred by electronic means to strings so as to set them vibrating. The noises of the rain were also used to trigger a voltage-controlled apparatus. The total merges into the sound of an indoor rainshower for four pianists on two pianos and loudspeakers.” It is the pianists who appear as interlopers in this scene rather than the loudspeakers. The electronic canvas looms so large; one gets the impression of overhearing a piano rehearsal in the midst of a steady Utrecht downpour.

(c) Jason Stell