NEW MUSIC FORUM 2025 - PERCUSSION FEAST
Program
New Music Forum Ensemble
The opening concert of this year’s New Music Forum turns its attention to the sonic and conceptual expansion of percussion as a bearer of compositional thought. In doing so, it raises the question of a new form of musical work in which the primary organising principle is no longer pitch, but the proliferation and transformation of sound material itself.
At the centre of the programme are works by John Cage, through which the composer gradually established a new paradigm for the organisation of sound. In the early First Construction (in Metal) (1939), the expansion of material remains confined to the variety of metallic timbres, whereas in Credo in Us (1942) – through the inclusion of electric buzzers, found objects (such as tin cans), and radio inputs – an entirely new world of sonic sources emerges. This process reaches a symbolic culmination in Child of Tree (1975), where Cage, by incorporating natural elements (the sounds of plants), radically extends the very notion of musical material.
This transgression of traditional sound organisation also characterises the works of Cage’s spiritual and aesthetic contemporaries: from the restrained gesturality of Morton Feldman’s The King of Denmark (1964) to the poised aleatoricism of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Refrain (1959).
A special place in the programme is reserved for a new composition by Vili Polajnar (commissioned by the New Music Forum, world premiere), which continues the tradition of experimental investigation into the nature of sound. The Slovenian composer will discuss his artistic premises and creative process in a pre-concert conversation with Gregor Pompe.
Admission free. Seat reservations: https://forms.gle/ipBsrMiN9hmfyEue7.