Symphony Golden Dragon version for programme notes
2000-revised in 2001
 

There are three main elements onto which this piece is constructed.
 1) Sound. This is often created by successions of clusters; I shall call them cluster-chorales, hissing sounds (strings), chromatic walls,  
and/or modal sound fields.
 2) Motives. There are a number of motives of different character forming the basis of the composition, either tonal-melodic or harmonic  
and chromatic.
 3) Traditional gestures. A lot of gestures in the piece originate from traditional symphonic music. The final chorale towards the end of the  work is some sort of blown up Tchaikowski.
The three elements join each other in a fourth element: Layers. On many occasions there are different elements sounding simultaneously and in different instrumental groupings.
An important feature in the Symphony’s orchestration is the particular octave doubling, or being “on the verge of octavation”. Idea is to  
create extra tension by not resolving dirty octaves, i.e. major sevenths and minor ninths. One could say the orchestration has become  
part of compositional ideas, even with finding pitches.
The work was first performed in the competition Project Jonge Componisten (Young Composers Project) in May 2002 by the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra (now Holland Symfonia), and was conducted by Peter Rundel. It was also performed during the 2005 Gaudeamus week in Amsterdam.
After its original setting including Wagner tubas and contrabass trombone, the symphony was revised in 2001 and the orchestration was  
reduced.

Symphony Golden Dragon Longer versions

2000-revised in 2001

There are three elements on which this piece is constructed.
1) Sound. This is often created by successions of clusters, I call them cluster-chorales (ms.95-124), hissing sounds (ms.9-44 and further (strings)), chromatic walls (ms.58-75, 138-144) or modal soundfields ("Nightidea" ms.178-196).
2) Motives. There are a number of motives of different character forming the basis of the composition, either tonal-melodic or harmonic and chromatic. The latter ones form an immediate bridge to the clusterchorales from the sound-element (ms. 3,4,5 the motive in the flute and bassoon-parts, becoming "Death Valley" in ms.9 and further on, returning in ms.195,196,197).
To summarize some more motives: the heroic motive in the trumpets in ms.82, the broken diminished seventh chord has a more traditional and signal-like character. Another motive in the trumpet parts in ms.94-95 returns in a tutti in ms.153, and in ms.203 in the Wagner-tubas and French horns. This motive has a kitchy character. The descending motive in ms.157 is an often returning idea in the lower regions of the orchestration.
3) This last motive (definitely not the only one) forms also the connection to the third element: traditional gestures. A lot of gestique in the piece, also given shape by octave doubling (or by gestures drawn from the idea being major sevenths and minor ninths not resolving into the octave) in the orchestrations, origins from traditional symphonic music.
The final chorale from ms.220 to the end is some sort of blown up Tchaikowski.

These three elements join eachother in a fourth element: layers. Often there are different elements sounding simultaneously, especially in the ending in ms.227 and 228.
The work was first performed in the competition Project Jonge Componisten (Young composers project) in May 2002 by the Netherlands’ ballet Orchestra (now Holland Symfonia) in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, conducted by German conductor Peter Rundel.
After its original setting including Wagnertuba’s and contrabasstrombone, the symphony was revised in 2001 and the orchestration was reduced.

Program notes

In the beginning of each February, Chinese New Year was celebrated in Bangkok, where I lived close to Chinatown for five years. Loud firecrackers and Chinese opera ruled the street scene. As in my previous work, Silk Execution, I again incorporated the thundering expression of Chinese opera in this piece.
This symphony, Golden Dragon, was composed against a Southeast Asian setting, a culture penetrated by superstition and animism. According to the Chinese zodiac, year 2000 was the year of the dragon. The following is a passage from a Bangkok newspaper, dated February 6th, 2000:
"...To many, the Year of the Dragon is a repository of luck, prosperity and power; babies born during the year are believed to bring good things to both themselves and their families...This year carries the added bonanza of a 'golden dragon' ruling, a phenomenon that occurs only once every 60 years in Chinese astrology..."

The Nietzschean dragon is named "Thou belongest" and has to be fought by the freedom hunting lion; "I want" it says. ‘All that has value was already created and all created values, that is I. Truly, ‘I want’ may no longer be!’ Thus spoke the dragon (Thus spoke Zarathustra I). This dragon of morals, a heavy weight on our shoulders existing already since the beginning of days to secure the harmony of living together, keeps the striving for freedom of each individual within boundaries. The heavy weight of tradition in western music, especially the tradition of the symphony (living together of sounds), will be doomed, already during the process of composing, to produce a ‘dragon’ of a piece. Accordingly, my intensions are not to take up a critical position towards this tradition. In my opinion, this would be a large step forward, and in that sense contemporary (such an old fashioned and out of date term) to acknowledge such a tradition. Not basing judgements on developments of the present period or on a most recent stylistic development, but one dating from the beginning of days. "Nothing is as temporary as up to date" said Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans.
I would like to refer to the philosophy of Henri Bergson dealing with the subject of time. He distinguishes the passing of time in the human experience (the memory), from the one in chronological, objective sense. Composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann calls the first one the "Kugelgestalt", the bullet-shaped appearance of time; the passing of time presents itself in the human memory as a subjective ball-like shape, which is different from the chronological-linear passing of it which is objective. The possibility of sublimating music from history as a whole, from different places (Asia for example) or even music from different cultural layers (from high-culture as well as low) into something you personally want to express I would like to call ‘subjection of time and place’. This forms an introduction to the final stage of this contemplation, dealing with that which in German is pointed out as ‘Ausdruck’ (expression). Why I make the decision to draw upon the tradition as a whole and for instance Chinese opera is because that which is expressed in either case originates from the same roots. A universal "primal-thing" is sculptured in a certain manner depending on time and place of it’s origins, which is unalterably present in the human system for already hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years and which thus connects us modern western or non-western humans directly with the primitive men. Our body and our being, as apposed to our opinions influenced by cultural, religious or technological developments explained as progression, are not that different from those lost years during which we were so called non developing. Our primary emotional experience, by nothing else evoked as in the way music does, rises above any by the intellect argued understanding (and hear me putting these thoughts in words step by step instead of urging you, listener, to please just get in a state of revelry by listening to my music!). During musical ecstasy it is not possible to call on the intellect. Knowledge serves the process of creation of a composition, but it should under no circumstances stand in the way of experiencing it. That would be something like reading a biology book while making love. Not that I’m having the illusion that the music I’m aiming for will be experienced by a primitive man in the same way as it would by someone from our time, of course knowledge as a matter of fact is a necessity to establish an experience on a higher plane. When ‘the experience’ itself is examined, it has to be stated that this is not absolutely dependant on the external stimulus. When certain persons are getting tears in their eyes from listening to a tear jerker, then this experience is of an equal category as when this happens to a member of a concert audience listening to a Mahler-symphony.

Years ago, I witnessed a traditional Chinese funeral which shaped my opinions about what I want to say through music. The service took place on a stage, where the procession was dressed in mourning costumes, guided by a priest, and accompanied by very expressive percussion. These family members were slowly led to join the spirit of the deceased to the afterworld by crossing a bridge, symbolically separating the living and the dead. The priest exclaimed verses that I could not understand in an emotional manner, while the family sung and cried without inhibitions. This moving situation grabbed my chest, as if the living descended into an actual afterworld, not anticipating that they soon had to return to the realm of the living by crossing the little bridge again, leaving the dead behind.
As the percussion crescendated, I realized that I was not watching a theatrical performance. This vehement involvement of spectators, myself amongst them, was based on an actual, tragic event. However, my emotions that were awakened hitherto, have been experienced in exactly the same way as in the theatre or concerthall where "reality" is absent, although modelled after real experiences or "true stories". Therefore, I discovered that the authenticity or origins of the stimulus is inconsequential, so long as the emotional experience remains intact. This is exactly what music is able to achieve: it can establish emotional adventures, which otherwise may only occur during extreme situations in real life. Music is truly, a tightrope-walker balancing on a silver thread of emotion.

Click here for audio examples 1, 2 and 3 of the work