SO QUIET

Children's Music

2023

Format: Digitalno

Number of pages: 38

Notes contain text: no

Code: 80004

ZKP RTV Slovenia, in cooperation with Radio Slovenia's ARS programme, is releasing a symphonic composition for babies, toddlers and vulnerable groups So Quiet (Tako tiho) by Larisa Vrhunc and its score. The piece was created as part of the international B-AIR project led by Radio Slovenia and was one of the recommended works at the 69th International Rostrum of Composers in The Hague in 2023.

So Quiet is the first in the series of orchestra works, created as part of the B-AIR: Creating sound art for babies, toddlers, and vulnerable groups project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. It was performed at concerts for babies, toddlers, children with developmental disabilities and their parents, and was followed by a performance for an adult audience. So Quiet was among the recommended works at the 69th International Rostrum of Composers in The Hague in 2023.

The composer describes the process of creating this piece:

“The first realization at working with various experts was that young children still retain a primal curiosity and do not reject certain musical styles. They are mainly interested in the sound itself: how it is created, how it moves through space, how it changes over time. They are extremely sensitive to sound impulses, they perceive high frequencies stronger than adults, but cannot tolerate sudden changes and loud sounds. They follow guided activities more intently if they listen to appropriate sounds, soothing music, or sounds with alpha brain waves frequencies. These waves can already be measured at 3-year-olds and have a frequency around 8 or 10 Hz. Children are not calm during most of their waking hours, but they show basic emotions from a very early age and learn their self-regulation.

This piece is quiet, slow, and seeks to find ways of inner movement, without stepping out of the defined limitations. The first part establishes interest in the sound phenomena, first calmly, with small surprises afterwards. Attempts to enter different emotions follow, but with the musical equivalents of alpha brain waves, an emotional balance is always established. Two singing bowls play an important role in the calm sections, and the harmonic basis of the piece is derived from their spectra.

The performance makes possible that children move freely and make sounds themselves. We offer them pads filled with paper and two rotating objects, which parents can spin at the children's request and trigger the tingling of hanging metal washers. The same sounds also come from the orchestra, as the musicians use similar washers and rustling paper.”

Larisa Vrhunc

Larisa Vrhunc studied composition in Ljubljana, Geneva and Lyon, as well as at numerous masterclasses, and she is currently employed at the Musicology Department of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana where she teaches music analysis and listening skills. She earned her PhD in musicology with a dissertation on the spectral music and its influence on Slovenian compositional creativity in recent decades.

She is a composer with a broad view of the contemporary musical landscape, but with a carefully constructed personal expression. Whether this involves spectral colours, a lachenmannian treatment of instrumental noise, an interest in sonority akin to electroacoustic music, or postmodern reflection on old music, her influences and knowledge are always reduced to a personal essence in her composing. Larisa Vrhunc’s music unfolds as a play of notes, noises and colours, carefully assembled in miniature configurations. Her music grows from a chamber sound which is a perfect environment for her poetic music of quiet weaving and layering. There is not much symphonic music in Larisa Vrhunc's oeuvre, with Hologram (2001) and Sound Images Between Fingers II (2011) as notable examples in this genre.