Time for a memory lane video.
It’s been ages ago, in 1989 to be exact, when I was asked by my neighbour who was a theatre director to compose the music for a play he’d written, called 'Stoelendans', Musical Chairs. His rather unusual request was to have the music played by street organ. Furthermore it was required that the music should be danceable, as the play’s staging would involve choreography. On his question whether I was able to accomplish such a thing I answered “Yes, of course I am!”, which was a glaring lie, as for a start I didn’t know squat about street organs, i.e. how they worked. However, I could use the money, so I just bluffed my way in, hoping that somehow I would get away with it.
The most logical thing to do was to seek contact with the national street organ museum 'Van Speelklok Tot Pierement' in Utrecht. After having told about my assignment the museum’s director fortunately was more than willing to co-operate by allowing me to use whatever item the museum had in its collection. Moreover he got me in touch with a so-called 'noteur', notator, a craftsman who manufactures these perforated carton books which propel the organ’s mechanism. With the notator, Tom Meijer, I agreed to compose the music for piano as some sort of framework, leaving it to him to insert the typical tweets, twirps and rollers in the organ arrangement. And so that was the way the job was done, a very adventurous and pleasurable event, resulting in one of the most memorable musical feats I’ve ever been involved in as a creator.
In this video three pieces from the play’s musical program can be heard, played by three different so-called dance hall organs, i.e. oversized street organs, which were used during the first decades of the 20th century in dancing venues in Antwerp and Brussels, as a substitute for dance orchestras.
11 сен 2024
