Signs in the Air

How Does It Make Sense?

By Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen

Niels Rosing-Schow’s music has been described as characterised by refined and fascinating sounds, realised through seductive instrumental means. Or, as it has been put more succinctly, it is sensual, organic and rich in contrasts.

The four works on this album embody these qualities without exception and, despite their differences, display the same distinctive sonic refinement, seamlessly leading into the final piece on this release: Rosing-Schow’s instrumental arrangement of Debussy’s Six Épigraphes antiques (1914), originally composed for piano four hands.

Debussy’s original music carries a nearly explanatory resonance with Rosing-Schow’s sound world, as though it foreshadows it. His music feels both foreign and familiar. It doesn’t depend on the conventions of major-minor tonality; in its own way, it speaks for itself. The same can be said of Rosing-Schow’s compositions.

Precisely this ability to create immediate musical meaning is as vital to Rosing-Schow as his sonic refinement. It’s a theme so significant to him that he has written a book about it: Hvordan giver det mening? (‘How Does It Make Sense?’) (2023), which might be regarded as that rare thing – a composer’s poetics.

Reflecting on things has always come naturally to Rosing-Schow. He studied musicology at the University of Copenhagen and then continued at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, focusing on music theory and history, while simultaneously studying composition under Ib Nørholm. After completing his education in Denmark, he spent four months studying in Paris. In addition to composing, Rosing-Schow has left his mark on Danish musical life through several key roles. He has been a member of the Danish Arts Council’s Music Committee and served as a chairperson of the Danish Composers’ Society. At the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, he has served as a professor of composition and later as both vice-rector and rector.

In How Does It Make Sense?, Rosing-Schow explores how music creates meaning for the listener by combining core theories of musical perception with insights from his own experience as a composer to understand how sound becomes meaningful. Central to this is the brain’s tendency to perceive sonic movements as bodily sensations: notes can move up and down, music can be forceful or soft, flowing or jagged, and through volume, we can sense distance or proximity.

Rosing-Schow refers to these fundamental patterns of sound as ‘kinetic archetypes’. They are universal musical gestures that transcend individual differences and create shared meaning. By using these recognisable gestures, a composer can create music in a way which offers immediate meaning to the listener.

To grasp this meaning, the listener must be able to ‘recall’, pay attention and ‘categorise’ what they hear. Categorisation helps build what Rosing-Schow calls ‘auditory cognitive codes’. The more music we listen to, the more of these codes we master, and the better we become at extracting ‘meaning’ from music.

When experiencing Rosing-Schow’s music and delving into his book, it becomes clear that his ambition is to communicate directly, ensuring that even listeners without deep musical knowledge can engage. As he puts it himself, the ‘music should be expressive, but on music’s own terms.’

That music should make comprehensible gestures is one thing. The way music develops over time is just as important. In this respect Rosing-Schow is known for creating clear musical processes in which one state naturally transforms into the next. Crucially, it must be evident what causes the sound to shift from one state to another.

Even though Rosing-Schow has a deep theoretical understanding of music, he primarily uses this knowledge as a tool to translate non-musical experiences into sounds. A prime example is the album’s opening work, Dance and Signs in the Air (2016), commissioned for the Danish Chamber Player’s 25th anniversary. This piece originates from a very specific experience in a park in Shanghai. Rosing-Schow recounts:

‘A group of people are dancing to crackling music from a ghetto blaster – a man is drawing the most beautiful calligraphy on the ground. He paints on the asphalt with water that quickly evaporates in the sun. I was captivated by the poetic scene, even though it was regularly disrupted by the noise of the city. Some guards appeared, and the scene dissolved without leaving a trace. Except for an imprint in the mind. As fleeting as music painting its notes in the air.’

This was the inspiration, ‘the vision’. The composer’s task then lies in creating a catalogue of immediately meaningful sonic objects, as well as energetically profiled temporal and sonic spaces. He then explores how these elements function over time and how they can interact in meaningful ways. This provides the foundation for grouping the elements and discovering specific patterns that he can use in the composition.

Rosing-Schow selected gestures, and listened to the possibilities of, amongst other things, the changes inherent in the chosen gestures. He described how he felt himself to be within a double track, at the same time listening and creating. The listening depended on what was created, and the creation depended on what was heard.

Ultimately, the relationship between the vision and the concrete music is the composer’s responsibility, even though others may hear and experience the music in their own way. In Dance and Signs in the Air, Rosing-Schow creates a subtle reference to Chinese music with the help of quarter-tones. These break the equal-tempered ‘classical’ atmosphere and evoke a different sense of scale.

The work’s main progression illustrates the composition’s focus on comprehensible gestures and musical archetypes. We are presented with a high, piercing single note that pulses between a sustained sound and repeated notes. This note collapses, nearly physically, like an object that falls through the air and lands on a deep note. From there, a striking piano arpeggio throws us back to the heights. And with this, the foundational elements for the first few minutes of the piece are established.

We can interpret these as the ‘signs’ the title places ‘in the air’ – the medium of sound itself. These ideas, or signs, are nuanced and refined yet remain accessible to all. In essence, it’s as straightforward as it sounds.

These well-defined musical elements reveal a wealth of possibilities. The deep note, for instance, doesn’t always trigger the piano arpeggio immediately. It can also stand alone, summoning other developments.

The distinctly shaped elements make it both possible and engaging to follow the music’s movements, which are always clearly sculpted. Changes and new elements stand out sharply when introduced. One can easily sense what drives the shifts, whether a gradual evolution or a stark contrast. Along the way, a fleeting waltz emerges – a nod to the ‘dance’ in the title. The music is not only beautiful and refined but also meaningful on a fundamental level, ideally accessible and enjoyable to listeners without prior musical training or knowledge of complex auditory codes.

The album’s second work, Granito y arco iris (1999), is a chamber concerto for accordion and nine instruments which distinguishes itself differently. It appears not to draw from a specific experience but from the conceptual pairing of granite and rainbow – two contrasting natural phenomena, each compelling in its own way, which as metaphors unlock a rich array of associations. Rosing-Schow explores the tension between the solid and enduring (granite) and the ephemeral and intangible (rainbow light). He crafts a dialogue between structural clarity and a spectrum of perceptual nuances, expressing both the concrete and the abstract in music.

The music unfurls in three vast waves of movement, progressing from pianissimo to forte fortissimo, each uniquely structured but generally expanding from fewer to more instruments, ending in a prolonged resonance. The first wave begins with an almost pure note that gradually gains motion before stiffening again. The instrumentation is remarkable: shifts between strings and accordion begin the wave, their distinct timbres blending so seamlessly that they sound nearly identical.

The second wave features a captivating perpetuum mobile (perhaps evoking the ‘broken light’ of the title) on flute and clarinet. Beneath this, chord blocks – possibly symbolising granite – emerge alongside a trumpet melody. The wave peaks in a brief solo accordion cadenza.

The third and final great wave is defined by sweeping string sounds that are gradually worked through. Delving into the title, one might hear granite in the deep chord progressions and the rainbow in the figurations and high-pitched notes that seem to meld into them.

In Carried Away (2019) we find again the concrete gestural movements from the second work on this album. The music’s meaning lies in both the sound and action: specific notes serve as fixed points for activity, while particular playing techniques – like playing on the piano’s strings and forceful harp plucks – draw attention and shape the structure. Rising cello and bassoon lines launch the progression, their repetition clearly signalling the approach of the close.

Respiro ergo sum (2015) – ‘I breath, therefore I am’ – is a three-movement work for accordion and cello. It reworks Descartes’ famous ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’) and illustrates how closely Rosing-Schow ties an extramusical idea to a purely musical form. Breathing is made explicit partly through the accordion’s bellows, which produce a rhythmic breath in the second movement, and partly through a special bowing technique that lets the cello ‘breathe’ too. But the intake of breath can also be heard in the hectic, almost implied movements of the first movement’s highly characteristic, distinctly Rosing-Schow-like processual flow, building toward various climaxes. It can also be slow and heavy, like a sleeping breath, in the almost magical final movement. Here, the music feels like portraits of bodily – or perhaps emotional – states, expressed through breathing.

Debussy’s Six Épigraphes antiques, as noted earlier, fits seamlessly as an extension of the previous works: its structure, mood and content are poetic, marked by the elegance and sensuality that define Debussy’s style.
 

Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen is a Danish composer, organist and music scholar.