Yonatan Ron - Cette piece n'est pas pour Magritte (2021)

The title 'This piece is not for Magritte' is after Magritte's - La Trahison des images.
(Where we sense a pipe with a text stating: This is not a pipe)

Check youtube video for observing the images while listening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aAo3l6JBBU&t=125s

All paintings copyrights are reserved to René Magritte

I – Panorama populaire
II – Day or night – (from the series – ‘L'Empire des lumières’)
III – The magician
IV – Le blanc seing
V – Architecture au clair de lune 

Piano - Ching-Fang Teng
Recording, audio engineering, editting & mastering - Gaia Heichal

Recorded at The Royal Conservatory, The Hague 04.05.21

Cette piece n'est pas pour Magritte

With ‘Similetude’ I aimed to transform intimate gestures based on sonic resemblance into an influx of idiomatic mannerisms.
At first, a repetitive single-motion gesture made of rhythmic, dynamic, and tone-
color uniformity starts to emerge. This homogeny of qualities causes the materials to fuse, and makes it hard to tell which instrument produces what sounds exactly.
The resulting sound of this single motion-gesture depends on the force applied to each instrument.
With each repetition, the gesture slowly reveals the sound properties unique to each of the instruments.
The complementary section lets these fused materials to slowly ‘diffract’ and diverge from their common points of homogeny & resemblance. The music then gradually transforms back into moments of textural cohesion, this time under a different guise.

Flute - Cassie Lear
Percussion - Melissa Wang
Horn - Nicholas Hidy
Cello - Ryan Farris

Artistic Director - Prof. Cristina Valdes

Performed at The University of Washington - Meany Hall - 05.26.2023

Similetude - For Mixed Quartet (2023)

UW Modern Music Ensemble
Cristina L Valdés, Director

Seattle Modern Orchestra
Julia Tai, conductor

Rachel Reyes, flute
Angelique Poteat, clarinet/bass clarinet
Ryan Kaspandy, bassoon
Luke Fitzpatrick, violin
Rose Hashimoto, viola
Ha-Yang Kim, cello
Alex Fang, piano

I. Times sway
II. Echoes, decay...

The piece explores different types of oscillations, these may present themselves in the form of a simple, repeated melodic interval at a regular rate, or complex, acoustic beats that occur when an interval smaller than a semi-tone is sustained. This notion of stable &amp; regular ratios is also used to serve the majority of rhythmic & metric detail in the piece.

The first movement is based on cascading, scalic patterns that transform into slow melodic-steps and vice versa. While the texture is mostly polyphonic, many phrases and strata intersect with heterophony as well as homophony due to the voices’ proximity in range, or similarity in timbre and rhythm. This movement starts and develops with dense contrapuntal textures and concludes with sparsely voiced chords.

The second movement resonates with the concepts of the first and serves as an echo of the materials explored in it. Differently than the first movement, apart from the imitations at its beginning, in this movement - the degree of autonomy among voices is high, given that voices differ from each other in either rhythm, timbre, or range.

Both movements develop in an interrupted continuous way. There are barely any sudden changes, raptures, nor rests, so that when they occur, their dramatic impact seems substantial.

Performed in Meany Hall—Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater on May 3, 2024

Echoes, decay...

Times sway

...xyz... - for solo viola (2014)

Inspired by and dedicated to the artwork of Orna Millo.
Conductor – Julia Tai
Flute – Sarah Pyle
Clarinet – Rachel Yoder
Percussion – Bonnie Whiting
Piano – Cristina Valdes
Violin – Luke Fitzpatrick
Cello – Christine Lee

Seattle Modern Orchestra.

University of Washington, Seattle, March 12 2025.
___________________________
In discussions on coherence in Western concert music, collages were often viewed as incoherent and jumbled forms due to their fusional nature, which led to a perceived lack of consistency. This criticism doesn’t necessarily apply to arts that are presented as static objects, like sculpture, painting, or architectural design—where coherence is judged by the unity of the (static) form. In contrast, this issue is relevant for art “in actus”—art-mediums that evolve over time, such as music, theatre, video, and dance—where coherence is assessed based on the temporal evolution and where forms gradually unfold.
The motivation for this piece began with my curiosity about what it would take to compose a collage that is uninterrupted and continuous, yet clearly communicates as a collage made of distinct materials, which, also when seeming to reappear, have been reformed to merely allude to their initial presentation.
As the piece evolves, fundamentally different ideas transform into one another, with each transition ensuring that one parameter—pitch collection, register, dynamics, duration, or timbre—remains unchanged across successive ideas. 
The image I envisioned while composing was that of a dark ride at an amusement park, where the emphasis lies in the paradox of expecting the unexpected.

Still Moves (2024)

Ricercar - Hommage à Aldo Clementi

Ido Akov - Piano, Celesta

Guy Avital - Recording

Hateiva June 18'


"Ricercar" is based on the concept of accelerating & decelerating  canons invented by Aldo Clementi.

Two tempo transformations occur simultaneously and gradually, one for each of the instruments, playing the exact same polyphonic melody a tritone apart,the melody consists of Perfect 4th and 5th intervals only, layouting thirds and sixths.
The entire loop (13 bars) is all derived from the very first bar which is being played  back (reversed) and forth (linear)  ommiting one note from each edge of the contur at a time.

-Yonatan Ron (May 18')

Ricercar - Hommage à Aldo Clementi

"Klaustrum" - for string trio

Performed by -Meitar Ensemble-

Marco Fusi - Violin
Moshe Aharonov - Viola
Yoni Gotlibovich - Cello

30.6.18 - Israeli Conservatory Of Music, Tel-Aviv.
Concert for the memory of Matan Givol.
___________________________________________________________

"Klaustrum" was composed during the winter of 2015 (mostly between October and  December, finished on January 2016)
At that time, my main focus revolved around large scale gradual transitions in musical textures, or in other words: Graspable long-lasting transformations.
This explains the wide use of repetitions, although non-identical. There is always at least one transformation of a single parameter.

Through a global view perspective, the piece deals with a very small musical cell (a narrow pitch range cluster in hetero-phonic texture), begging to emancipate itself to become more extroverted. To turn "open" as opposed to the closed cluster of the beginning. Only towards the end of the piece, this necessity for blossom, which functions as a resolution, turns audible and may be experienced.

The title is derived from a similar idea. Wide usage of a tone cluster that features a strong Middle Eastern identity is repeated several times throughout the piece. It continues by developing the same sonic matters and gradually transforms towards an explosive culmination.

| Yonatan Ron 2016 |

Klaustrum

Headphones recommended

First movement from the series "Arctic Sketches".

I-Frost
II-Avalanche
III-Tundra
IV-By first light

Piano - Sebastiano Evangelista

July 16th 2018, The Hague.

Arctic Sketches [Mvt.I] - Frost

Performed by Meitar Ensemble

A miniature regarding the idea of 9/8 ratio.
Matan Dagan - Violin
Amit Dolberg - Piano

As part of the 'Klohn Prize' concert. 
27.02.20

Stimulus - For Violin & Piano

Yonatan Ron - à travers l'horizon - (2020)

Background/program notes are below to the credits.

Conductor - Guy Feder
Piano - Amit Dolberg
Flute - Hagar Shahal
Oboe - Dima Malkin
Clarinet - Jonathan Hadas
Bass Clarinet - Tomer Ornan
Bassoon - Nadav Cohen
Saxophone - Eli Korman *
Violin - Talia Herzlich *
Viola - Nathanael Gubler*
Cello - Yonni Gotlibovich
Percussion - Amir Lavie

* - Members of the Tedarim Ensemble
M. Mus for contemporary music, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance

Sound engineering - Yaron Aldema (Israeli Music Festival 20.12.20)



PROGRAM NOTES:
The piece is based on an anecdote concerned with the Meitar Ensemble, to whom it is dedicated, as the ensemble has planned a tour to far Asia which got cancelled due to the consequences of the corona-virus outbreak. 
This idea of an excitement towards an adventure, a dream which 'steams' in front of one's eyes, a lost potential of an exotic experience have intrigued me to find it's world of musical rhetoric.
Throughout the 13 minutes there's a constant attempt from the music to erupt & to elevate, yet there's always a grounding force or one which is pulling backwards.
I've aimed for a very cohesive, synthetic & homo-sonorous overall sound quality as the story is about the ensemble as a whole.
The material used reinforces the narrative as it is designed by a continuous montage made of highly concentrated events which morph into one another, while respecting a global temporal trend of prolongation.
The opening statement and its following incident are together forming a microcosm of the essence behind the piece. The music turns increasingly Manipulative towards the listener's memory, recognition & demarcation of the material, as it constantly refers back to the one introduced during the very first minute of the piece. These variants appear each time under a different configuration.
The harmony is generated from the ratios of harmonics: (11, 13, 14/15, 17, 19 & 16, 18, 20, 24, 27) which together form two sets of correlated pentatonic scales, with no shared notes.
(Black against white keys in 'C').

Yonatan Ron

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