Peter Gizzi’s great poem Vincent, Homesick for the Land of Pictures from his collection The Outernationale was set to music as a long song, written for the extended Trio Scordatura. It was premiered by Alfrun Schmid, Bob Gilmore (keyboard), Elisabeth Smalt (viola) and Lucas van Helsdingen (bass clarinet) at Poetry International in Rotterdam in 2014, in the presence of the poet.
Trio Scordatura specializes in microtonally tuned music. For every one of the fourteen stanzas of the poem and for the wordless middle, I created a tuning in a different just intonation universe, giving each stanza its own harmonic color. Click here for technical details about the tuning and manner of playing, as well as the poem’s full text and a translation into Dutch.
In 2015, Trio Scordatura played the piece in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, with myself replacing the late Bob Gilmore on keyboard. The recording presented here is of that performance.
The poem and its translation were printed in a beautiful limited edition by Studio 3005.
Extended Trio Scordatura
Alfrun Schmid, soprano
Elisabeth Smalt, viola
Lucas van Helsdingen, bass clarinet
Samuel Vriezen, keyboard
Recorded by Marc Sabat
Live at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2015