Janne Jakobsson, tuba
18. Tage der Neuen Musik Bamberg
30 October 2021

18. Tage der Neue Musik Bamberg

EMBODIED: Tuba Solo (2021)

Radix (2013–14)
a brass quintet

Trumpet in C, Trumpet in Bb, Horn in F, Tenor Trombone, Tuba (F)
Duration: 12'
Commissioned by Ensemble Schwerpunkt, with funds provided by Madetoja Foundation (Madetoja-säätiö) and Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland (Svenska kulturfonden).
Fp: Ensemble Schwerpunkt, 5 November 2013, Helsinki in a concert organized by Korvat auki

This recording is from a live performance by Ensemble Schwerpunkt on 14 June 2015 at the Müncherer Gasteig as part of the aDevantgarde.13 festival (Munich, Germany).

Documentation shared here with everybody's kind permission.

Radix (2013–14) for brass quintet

Hologramme (2009)
flute, clarinet, harp, piano, vibraphone, percussion
Duration:
Commissioned by Ensemble Adapter (Germany) with funds provided by the Finnish Cultural Foundation
Distributor: Music Finland
Fp: Ensemble Adapter, Berlin, 26 August 2009

This recording is from a performance by Ensemble Adapter on 22 September 2010 at Tenalji von Fersen during the Ung Nordisk Musik Helsinki: COLLISION! festival.

In holography, a two-dimensional object appears to be three-dimensional. (Stephen Hawking has suggested that this phenomenon applies polydimensionally to the whole universe.) My musical ’holograms’ have, until now, been solely apparitions in the pitch domain. This has been achieved through ’difference tones’, where two pitches psychoacoustically form a third tone, the subtraction of their respective frequencies (it is actually our nervous system doing this, allowing me to compose not only for air molecules, but also for brainwaves, quite literally). This purely natural and perceivable phenomenon has formed the basis of my pitch organisation, together with adaptations and modulations of another natural phenomena, such as the overtone series. The ideology of ”pure naturality” has been enforced with use of so called ’extended’ techniques (which a composer of today typically regards only as ’[previously] excluded’ techniques, sounds naturally occurring on the instruments).

In Hologramme (2009), commissioned by Ensemble adapter for their Carambolage – Im Groove der Neuen Musik (’in the groove of New Music’) concert in Berlin, it was natural to adapt the metaphor of holograms further into the rhythmic domain. Resultant rhythms of different polyrhythms – which are ratios just like frequencies of the overtone series – are being written out though auditive association and layered three-dimensionally in different speeds, much like in prisms – and not totally unlike in the music of the classic New York hip hop group Beastie Boys.

© 2009 Jarkko Hartikainen

Hologramme (2009) for quintet

self-aware (2011)

for accordion (male performer with a speaking part), piano (female performer with a speaking part)

Duration: 13′
Fp: Duo Oneplusone (Timo Kinnunen, accordion, and Anna Veismane, piano), Rīgas Latviešu biedrība, Rīga, Latvia, 4 October, 2011

This recording is from a performance by Antti Leinonen (accordion) and Elisa Järvi (piano) on 29 October 2012 at G18 during the Korvat auki 35 festival in Helsinki (Finland)

the text in the work:

Aren’t I here to be a mirror?
So you can see your world anew.

To make you listen what’s actually there.
Thus making you conscious of how you listen.
Or used to, before you met me.

I hope you notice something new.
Realize, that it wasn’t like you thought it was, or would be.

Are you then sure you don’t carry with you
any other such false assumptions
you’re not aware of?

(c) Jarkko Hartikainen

self-aware (2011) for a male accordionist and a female pianist

impro with electric guitar* into effects^ into audio interface† into DAW¹
© Jarkko Hartikainen (January 6, 2025)

* PRS Custom 24 FR SE
^ see image (didn't use the looper on this one)
† SSL12
¹ Reaper (no post-performance editing, just rec and render to audio file)

Guitar Epiphany (improvisation, I/2025)

Levitations (2023) for cl trb vc pno

Sonata for Bicycle (2020)

Performed by Anna-Sofia Anttonen and Maria Puusaari

Baby-talking jive (2022) for alto saxophone and violin

Performed by Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, cond. Jan Söderblom

puiden (2021) for string orchestra

no input, only the pedalboard itself (pictured)

pedalboard improvisation 8/2025

another no-input pedalboard improvisation (8/2025)

Ensemble Adapter
16 September 2016
Rotation / Adoptions 2016
ExRotaprint, Berlin-Wedding

Ensemble Adapter:
Kristjana Helgadóttir, alto flute
Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson, bass clarinet (& paper)
Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, harp (& electric fan)
Matthias Engler, percussion (Marimba, 2 cymb., G.C.)

________________________________________________


Studies on Empathy

Commissioned by Ensemble Adapter
with funds provided by Madetoja-säätiö (Madetoja Foundation)

“…the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs…” (Roland Barthes, “Le grain de la voix”)*

Studies on Empathy (2016) takes materiality as the medium of musical expression, i.e. the information that the sound carries of its own immediate production: how much force, resistance, friction, sensitivity… I experience this kind of listening as empathetic. This is an important aspect, because, as even modern neuroscience tells us, the opposite of loving your fellow man is not hating them—it is indifference.

Written in positive feelings of continuity, trust, passion and friendship, this work is my second Ensemble Adapter commission to date.

© 2016 Jarkko Hartikainen


* translation from the French original by Stephen Heath; Image Music Text, 1977








www.jarkkohartikainen.net
www.ensemble-adapter.de

Studies on Empathy (2016) for quartet

2 Dec 2017 premiere at WHS Teatteri Union, Helsinki
defunensemble

Hanna Kinnunen, bass flute
Mikko Raasakka, bass clarinet
Lily-Marlene Puusepp, harp
Emil Holmström, piano and sampler
Markus Hohti, cello
Timo Kurkikangas, electronics
_____

(seepings) is a piece about integration, about belonging, about and within the lived materiality of recorded music.

dedicated to (and commissioned by) defunensemble.

© 2017 Jarkko Hartikainen


—————————————————————————

(seepings) (2017) for ensemble and sampler
commissioned and premiered by, and dedicated to, defunensemble (Helsinki, Finland, EU)

Since I identify as a huge music nerd who seems to have an actively hypersensitive creative brain regarding sonic phenomena, associations to existing music often disrupt my creative work flow that strives for freshness and new contexts in a concentrated acoustic listening environment. In (seepings) (2017), which began as an inquiry into finding a personal relationship with ‘the electroacoustic’, I let such echoes of certain unescapable past influences seep through rather concretely – using ‘their’ instrument, the loudspeaker.

From a half-second of recorded music, the human brain is typically capable of recognizing only the genre and the decade (if even that), according to scientific studies in mental chronometry. This is naturally relative to the listener’s personal experiences with music(s), yet there exists a certain biological hard limit where we are able to listen to specific sounds with utmost concentration yet can’t recognize them as individual artistic expressions but rather as representations of larger musico-cultural contexts.

We may even repeatedly misrecognize the agency behind a short enough audio snippet with someone else using the same instruments, technology, etc. Then again, a shared pitch or chord (or a compositional logic that makes several very short impulses form one melody or scale) may make otherwise unrelated samples appear as an original work of a third party. I have studied the complexity and the edges of this psychological phenomenon with deliberate artistic research into the materiality of short samples of certain personally influential musical sounds: how they react to each other in different durations, proximities, and compositions in general.

© 2018 Jarkko Hartikainen

(seepings) (2017) for ensemble and sampler [bootleg]

Written during the Composing for Accordion workshop, on the first week of the Darmstadt Summer Courses 2018, under the tutorship of composer Rebecca Saunders and accordionist Krassimir Sterev. 

Performed by (and created in tight collaboration with) accordionist Manca Dornik, who premiered the work at the Kleine Sporthalle of the Lichtenbergschule in Darmstadt, July 21, 2018 as part of the official festival program of the 49. Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt. At the end of the Darmstadt Summer Course 2018, Manca Dornik was awarded the Stipendiumpreis for her performance in, among others, this concert.


————————————————

Note on the programme leaflet of Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2018:

"Jarkko Hartikainen: CARDIO (2018) for accordion – world premiere

In CARDIO (2018), written earlier this week here in Darmstadt, I was focusing on the physicality of the accordion sound – the way external pressure can be applied on the body of the instrument to create various delicate acoustic phenomena. The piece was written in exceptionally tight (luxurious!) co-operation with the enthusiastic, fearless, talented and fun accordionist that is Manca Dornik.

–Jarkko Hartikainen"

Cardio (2018) for accordion

Eriikka Maalismaa, violin

Avanti! Summer Sounds Festival 2018, Porvoo (Finland, EU)
30 June 2018
world premiere
commissioned by Eriikka Maalismaa, the work's dedicatee, with funds provided by TEOSTO Commissioning Grant
recorded by Matti Heinonen, post-editing by Libero Mureddu
photo of Eriikka Maalismaa at the premiere by Heikki Tuuli

––––––-

EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018)

Although EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018) is through-composed and fully-notated, it is also simultaneously a communal halting by the sound produced in front of our ears by the observant, empathetic and touching coexistence and presence of a violinist and (t)he(i)r violin, who share a life together. Compositionally (in)formed meeting of two resonant material bodies. A loving squeeze.

The score, written in four days (the act of composing had, for the most part, happened by then), is both compositionally documenting the sounds produced at the meeting of the composer and the performer — both armed with violins under their chins — as well as serving as a starting point for the violinist Eriikka Maalismaa's (the work's commissioner and premierer) astounding capabilities to find immeasurable sonic nuances from her instrument. The violin's wooden-metallic corporeality is gently tickled, stroked and excited in musically embodied compassion.

The composition process began with a month-long meditative 'deep-sea sounding' on a borrowed violin in Trastevere, Rome. The EMBODIED family of works will be completed by works for solo tuba and solo percussion of identical lengths; these three works can be also played together in all possible formations—all the way up to the trio EMBODIED: Triple Solo— where the overall form will be perceived differently in each version.

IX/2018 Jarkko Hartikainen


EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018)

Vaikka EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018) on läpisävelletty, läpinotatoitu, on se samalla yhtälaisesti korviemme edessaäsoittaja–soitin-yhteiselosta syntyvä äänen äärelle pysähtyminen; havainnoiva, empaattinen ja koskettava läsnäolon hetki. Sävellyksellisesti muovattu värähtelyherkkien materiaalisten olentojen kohtaaminen. Rutistus.

Neljässä päivässä kirjoitettu partituuri (sävellystyö oli pääpiirteissään jo tuohon mennessä tehty) on samalla sekä transkriptio säveltäjän ja esiintyjän kohtaamisen äänistä– molemmilla viulut leuan alla – että lähtöalusta Eriikka Maalismaan hämmästyttäville kyvyille löytää lukemattomia erilaisia sävyjä soittimestaan, jonka puisen-metallista ruumiillisuutta teoksessani hellästi kutitetaan, silitellään ja ärsytetään kehollis-musiikillisesti myötäeläen.

Teoksen sävellysprosessi käynnistyi kuukauden mittaisella syväluotauksella lainaviuluun Trasteveressa, Roomassa. Teosperhe täydentyy vastaavanmittaisilla sooloteoksilla tuuballe sekä lyömäsoittimille; nämä kolme teosta voidaan soittaa myös yhtä aikaa eri yhdistelminä – aina trioon EMBODIED: Triple Solo asti –, jolloin teoksen kokonaismuoto hahmottuu aina eri tavoin.

IX/2018 Jarkko Hartikainen

EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018)

EMBODIED: Soprano + Violin (2019)

LIVE RECORDING
Meeri Pulakka, soprano, Eriikka Maalismaa, violin
28 January 2020
Camerata (Musiikkitalo), Helsinki (Finland)
Sibafest 2020: "Äänessä nykysäveltäjät"
Sibelius Academy
University of the Arts Helsinki
Recording by Olli Ovaskainen (Uniarts/SibA)
Concert producer: Janne Ikäheimo (SibA)
Organized by the Department of Composition and Music Theory (Uniarts/SibA)
Program note (in Finnish only, sorry!):


EMBODIED: Soprano + Violin (2019) yhdistää sooloteokset EMBODIED: Violin Solo (2018) ja EMBODIED: Soprano Solo (2018) yhtä aikaa esitettäväksi duoksi. Alun perin itsenäisiksi sävelletyt sooloteokset pureutuvat äänentuoton soitinspesifiin, keholliseen fyysisyyteen lähinnä äänenvärin empaattisen kuuntelun houkuttelemana. 

Eriikka Maalismaan tilauksesta syntyneessä viuluteoksessa sekä soittimen puisen kopan resonaatiotaajuus (ns. susiääni) että instrumentin metallisten kielten hauraat luonnonhuiluäänet ruumiillistuvat "elävässä" epästabiiliudessaan ja anatomisissa suhteissaan jopa teoksen muodossa, joka on syntynyt intiimin soitin-soittajayhteiselon konkreettisen materiaalisuuden tutkimisesta tiiviissä yhteistyössä esittäjänsä kanssa. Meeri Pulakalle omistetussa sopraanoteoksessa – esiintyjän ja instrumentin ollessa yhtä – vastaava metodiikka kohdistuu paitsi yksilölliseen, katkeamattoman äänentuoton ja hengityksen suhteeseen sekä vokaaliformanttien ja rekisterialueiden kaksi- ja kolmiäänisyyteen, myös vibrato-tremolon erilaisiin anatomisiin paikallistuksiin kehossa. Tämä johtaa teoksen lopussa koko kropassa tuntuvan ja myötätuntoa herättävän tunteen esille päästämiseen, joka hämärtää rajaa musiikin ja esitystaiteen välillä.

Sopraanoteoksen sävellysprosessin loppuvaiheilla kokeilin hetken mielijohteesta, miltä lähtökohtiensa puolestakin sisarteoksina näyttäytyneet, samassa trasteverelaisessa residenssihuoneessa alkunsa saaneet soolokappaleet kuulostaisivat päällekkäin, kuin samassa tilassa hengittävinä olentoina. Tuloksena syntynyt, soittimien yksilöllisistä kehollisista lähtökohdista määräytynyt kontrapunkti oli niin maagista, luonnollisella tavalla hengittävää ja linjojensa vahvuudessa ikään kuin rinnakkain samaan suuntaan kulkevaa elämää, että en voinut lopulta muuta kuin kirjoittaa teosten kantaesitysäänitteiden montaasista transkription nimellä EMBODIED: Soprano + Violin. 

Esityksessä kuulemme yhteisöllisesti, miltä näiden sooloteosten samanaikainen kohtaaminen kertoo yksilöllisyyden ja yhteisöllisyyden suhteesta, empatiasta, läsnäolosta ja moniäänisyydestä.

© 2019 Jarkko Hartikainen

EMBODIED: Soprano + Violin (2019)

www.jarkkohartikainen.net
sheet music: core.musicfinland.fi/composers/jarkko-hartikainen

Jarkko Hartikainen is a composer striving to create works that explore what music is and could still be, researching the possibilities in sound through rigorous performer-collaboration as well as studying findings in a plethora of disciplines. Stimulating acoustic phenomena, exciting sonorities and concrete, bodily impulses through rhythm, resonance and empathy fuel his often extremely instrument-specific, concentrated writing. Currently Hartikainen is working as a commission-based freelance composer, as well as pursuing his D.Mus degree at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Eriikka Maalismaa, defunensemble, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Ensemble Adapter and other such distinguished performers have recently promoted his work.

Jarkko Hartikainen

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