Iceland composer gets $100k
NewsThe Chanel Culture Fund has given composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir 100,000 Euros to do with as she pleases.
The same amount has been given to US bass-baritone Davóne Tines.
‘“It is a true pleasure to be one of the awarded artists in this wide-ranging recognition of various art forms from around the world. The prize shines an important and distinctive light on diverse fields within the arts and shows unequivocal commitment to the support of the arts and culture into the future,’ says Anna.
Well Deserved!!!!!!
She writes an icelandic music including sonic art bits, that smells of the landscape: sulfur, steam, lava, pulverized soil, the bare soul of geological slowly shifting masses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTG4BVM8Pps
Very impressive, and inhuman, nature at its relentless cruellest. But also including some sudden rays of inexpliccable sunlight. This icy lady is so much better than, for instance, Friedrich Haas, because she includes musical components.
(‘Metacosmos’: something beyond the cosmos, so: bigger than the cosmos; what was she thinking?)
Here is something else, also very landscapian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-iil3YYp5E
One hopes that she will spend the prize money on some compensating long holidays at the Mediterranean.
Similar, and superior, sounds are created more easily and vastly more effectively by electronic means. It’s a mystery to me why these people continue to insist on writing this kind of stuff for acoustic instruments. It’s actually very regressive. The real innovation in music is going on in the electronic world, not in the “classical music” world, and I say this as a composer of acoustic music.
Whereas your music is…. but I can’t find any worth commenting on. Oh, well.
It’s for a very different kind of people.
You nailed it.A frustrated would be composer and academic,mostly unperformed and without a position in a relevant conservatory. Artistic and personal flaws contributing in equal measure. Just let him have his illusions of importance.
That’s so true! Only a professional musician could see the obvious. In his somber moods he would complain to me that he would easily give-up performances, commissions, publications, acclaims, this whole residence with the gardens, his library, his family including the doggies, if he could only, ever, at some stage, o God, have a position – a real, paid position with real living students – at a relevant conservatory, as a really professional musician. (He would also lightly give-up ME which is less pleasant!) When we were in Paris we would have to drive him to the Conservatoire Superieure where he would kiss the treshold, and every German Hochschule we would pass on our way to concerts would sink him into deep depression and sleepless nights. He would recite all the important composers of the past who had a position at a relevant conservatory, knowing he would never be able to emulate them. But well, I’ve my job and just hope I will not be given-up so quickly!
Sally
I don’t know if her music will last for all time, and I’m pretty sure not it’s not for everyone; but what I know of her work I love it – I’m glad she got this award so hopefully can keep writing without worrying about mundane things like money. Her music has a haunting, ethereal beauty that is hard to describe. “Catamorphosis” and “Archora” are in my CD player several times a week – how does she conceive these incredible sounds?
That is a question that is very simple to answer:
https://pixels.com/featured/iceland-barren-landscape-04-gregory-dyer.html
Nobody ever gave Mozart $100k free money. The merts don’t add up.
Security and money went to Salieri: he got the job of Imperial Court Composer. There was only place for one.
Today, money for contemporary music goes to the conventional and the mediocre (at best), because comitees can no longer apply standards, since there aren’t any. So they look left and right what people say. They cannot be blamed…. It’s a kind of inverted Russian roulette.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: A lacklustre attempt at recreating Gerard Grisey’s music and adding to it a big dollop of silly music.
Her music has absolutely nothing in common with Grisey
But I would say she is much better than Grisey, you can hear she is really musical. Her work does say something, it gets across easily.
Thorvaldsdottir has a fascinating, totally unique musical language. Extremely powerful, like a journey into a strange landscape.
Yes, but the only disappointment is that she does not have a position at some relevant conservatory. We know that this is the only possible way to measure someone’s worth.
The emperor’s new clothes still apply today just as they did almost two hundred years ago in Denmark.