One big pasture (Één grote weide)
for guitar
The piece is part from a triptych.
Part 1: One big pasture, for guitar
Part 2: By the waterside, for percussion duo
Part 3: Éventail de Mademoiselle… for alto saxophone
The triptych forms one entity, however the components may also be performed by themselves.
The first part is the opening of the whole. There is a mediaeval thought: everything has its place in the scheme of things. I departed from the following piece of prose by Gonzalo Berceo*
I, master Gonzale de Berceo by name,
arrived, when on a pilgrimage,
at a green and grassy pasture,
where many flowers bloomed.
It was a lovely spot for a tired man.
The so fragrant flowers smelled wonderful
and refreshed a man's face and mind.
On all sides clear water flowed from rising
springs.
Here is a picture full of flowers refreshing the senses. The pasture is the holy virgin, halting place for and refresher of the traveller. The flowers are Mary's
names, and the springs are the evangelists. What is portrayed is that everything has its place in the scheme of things. And amidst all this the traveller is sitting daydreaming.
It is to be divided as follows: a pasture, many flowers blooming, water on all sides. It opens with a free melody in a pasture. From the melody the guitarist develops more and more different actions which keep returning throughout the piece, as a theme unfolding. The guitar is retuned twice, which causes a change in resonance. The free melody in the pasture returns. The player keeps applying the same actions, but the sound is different now. The guitar becomes the spring of flowing water.
*(Gonzalo Berceo lived in the Benedictine monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja, Spain, in the 13e century. Text from Miraclos de Nuestra Señora)
rr
Instrumentation
017 One big pasture (Eén grote weide)
(1998 revised 2006)
8:30’
guitar
First performance, Emiel van Dijk