Edward Top composer
photo © Marten Top
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Edward Top is a composer whose music is characterised by a pluriform style, which expresses both the balance and struggle between different musical traditions and identities. Born in The Netherlands in 1972 Top has lived and worked in London since 2003. He has received commissions of the Schoenberg Ensemble, Holland Symfonia, Calefax and the Birmingham Conservatoire, and his works are performed by Tokyo Sinfonietta, San Diego New Music, the Doelen String Quartet and the Dutch Radio Kamer Filharmonie. Having received several prizes for his compositions, recently he was nominated for best work of 2008 in The Netherlands during the Toonzetters competition for aliquid stat pro aliquo, which was performed live on the Dutch national radio by Vocaal LAB Nederland.
Top studied violin at the Rotterdam Conservatoire, composition with Peter-Jan Wagemans and musicology at King’s College London.
biography
philosophy
Here are some of Top’s personal remarks concerning music:
'The brain itself looks for relations between seemingly unrelated musical objects. A composer may assume that a modern audience is able to process a quickly changing variety of impressions; think of the new media. The realization of an eclectic collage form is only achieved, or “composed” in the mind of the listener.'
'The composer should be aware of the limitation of notation; he is expected to convey ideas to the musicians during the rehearsal period.'
'Music is a tightrope walker balancing on the silver thread of emotion.'
'To me, there are two types of music: music that goes somewhere, and music that doesn't. It is this simplification of the dynamic versus the static I need to constantly be aware of in order not to divert attention during the process of composition. When both are represented in a composition, it is the contrast and the conflict between these two polar opposites that makes music interesting to me.'
quotes
2009 Nominated for the 2008 Toonzetters Award, The Netherlands (for aliquid stat pro aliquo)
2007 One of NOISE’s first annual international call for scores winners, San Diego New Music SoundON Festival (for Four)
2007 New Millennium Composition Competition, Birmingham Conservatoire (with new work Cartesian Theatre)
2006 International Prize of Composition 'Atahualpa Yupanqui' Buenos Aires (for Why Elsewhere)
2006 Rudolf Escher Composer's Bursary for Mmus study at King’s College London (Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation)
2004 Henriette Bosmans Prize during the 2004 Dutch Music Days Festival (for Marble Sparks)
2003 Salvatore Martirano Award, University of Illinois (for String Quartet #1)
1999 Rotterdam Conservatoire Prize for Composition (for The Stillpoint and Silk Execution)
awards & achievements
2007 String Quartet #1 (1998) recorded by the Doelen Quartet, released by Etcetera (KTC 1339)
2007 Lied der Schwermut for baritone and string quartet (2002) live registration by Martijn Sanders and the Doelen Quartet, Attacca Records' (ATT27108)
recent recordings
‘My musical thinking centres on rationalizing the ‘Primordial Unity’. In my work, often the conflict between reason and that which derives from the 'Reptilian brain' finds a state of balance in musical schizophrenia where its two counter-poles madness and blankness occur simultaneously or in succession. Counter-poles amplifying each other is key in all of my compositions, but is most clearly exercised in the early works The Overwhelming Blankness of the Ultimate Meaninglessness of Tragedy, String Quartet #1 and #2, ... and he wept bitterly, and most recently in Cartesian Theatre.
Music has the power to induce the listener into a state of revelry that transcends rational understanding. Whilst using it to its utmost strength, at the same time I feel the need to musically comment on this state - or amplify it, really - by inserting introverted fields of sustained sound or blank, on silence-verging stasis. It is the exaggeration of contrast that creates captivating art.’
Toonzetters’ finalists, 2008 edition: Edward Top, Robin de Raaf and Einar Torfi Einarsson. Amsterdam, August 2009.
Top teaching violin at the BST Bangkok Symphony Orchestra String Training Institute, Bangkok 1996
Miguel Mera, Dario Marianelli and Edward Top discussing the music for a scene in the film Atonement during the Sound, Music and the Moving Image conference at BAFTA Piccadilly, London 2007.
