Exposition

From Clare Fischer to Olivier Messiaen: Broadening my creative potential as composer / arranger (last edited: 2017)

Thomas Böttcher
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In the course of my professional life, the main focus of my work had lain on being a side man, arranging/composing and performing for/with other people. While I had found a great deal of satisfaction doing so, I felt that I had put aside if not sometimes forgotten the question of how to nourish and broaden my creative potential and initiate projects of my own. My dream was and still is to strengthen and discover my own voice as composer and arranger within the Latin genre and beyond, giving my creativity the necessary room and musical nourishment to flourish and making writing/arranging the core activity of my professional musicianship, as performer of my own music and writing for others. For my research I decided to focus on the works of a great arranger and a great contemporary composer: Clare Fischer and Olivier Messiaen. I got first acquainted to Fischer’s works, when I saw him give a workshop at Codarts in 2001 and was deeply touched by his music , which seemed simple and complex at the same time. Already back then I was intrigued by his often very surprising harmonisation of simple melodies and his use of unconventional voicings. Having played the organ as an adolescent, I vaguely knew some works of Messiaen, but did not really appreciate them at the time. Later I heard “Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus” and was fascinated by the organic coexistence of atonal passages and late romantic harmony and the use of musical forms and variable rhythm that were totally new to me. Choosing the topic of my research, I presumed that the study of Fischer’s work would especially broaden my horizon as an arranger, while the research on Messiaen would help to open up my potential to be creative as a composer. Obviously, it is not always possible to strictly separate composing from arranging, and I hoped that the insights I could gain from both would be complementary. Thus, I formulated the following research question: How can I strengthen my voice as a composer/arranger, studying the musical language of Olivier Messiaen and the way it is influenced by the narrative aspect within his writing, and the use of voicings and harmony in the arrangements/compositions of pianist Clare Fischer?
typeresearch exposition
date24/02/2017
last modified25/02/2017
statusin progress
share statuspublic
affiliationCodarts
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/335656/335657
external linkwww.codarts.nl


Simple Media

id name copyright license
335798 28 Thomas Bottcher left hand loop with Messiaen motives right hand (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335795 27 Messiaen longer phrase with sequencial material (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335783 26 Messiaen returning phrase (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335781 25 Willem Tanke left hand loop with Messiaen motives (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335779 24 Willem Tanke left hand loop (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335776 23 Messiaen line expanding (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335774 22 Messiaen passage bot hands (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335772 21 Messiaen's chords on a dominant (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335770 20 Messiaen's chords on mode III (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335768 19 Messiaen's chords on mode II (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335766 18 Thomas Bottcher etude harmonised (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335763 17 Thomas Bottcher etude without harmony (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335755 16 Messiaen motive harmonised faster tempo (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335752 15 Messiaen motive harmonised slow rubato (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335749 14 organ improvisation 5 (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335746 13 organ improvisation 4 (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335738 12 Organ improvisation 3 (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335719 11 Organ improvisation 2 (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335715 10 Organ improvisation 1 (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335713 09 Agnus Dei with mode III (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335708 08 Agnus Dei mode II (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335703 07 Agnus Dei with chords on dominat (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335698 05 Thomas Bottcher piano arrangement - Ich bin von Kopf bis Fu+ƒ auf Liebe eingestellt (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335669 04 lds XVIII played slowly by Willem Tanke (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335667 03 La Nativite¦ü du Seigneur - 8. Les Mages (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335665 02 Du, du liegst mir im Herzen (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335662 01 reference recording Autumn Colours string quartet (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved
335659 Thomas Bottcher final ar report (c) Thomas Böttcher All rights reserved

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