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Music of Indium

As the name of this element comes from India, so does the music refer strongly to India’s music by use of many tanpuras, a typically Indian musical instrument, centuries old and used in virtually all its many musical traditions.

The music of Indium contains very slow transitions with pantonal use of tanpuras, suggesting the world of the traditional transparent element of Akasha, prior to and behind the ragas in which these instruments are usually employed. In opposition to their traditional use here the many tanpuras take an almost melodic role, meanwhile keeping their normal harmonic horizon function. The music is developing so slowly that discerning its overall long form is a challenge to the attentive listener, and the sections created in this album can help as a guide.

The tanpuras and a variety of sonorities created with several modular synthesis systems play the backbone of the harmony of Indium which is based on strict serial pantonality, using a 12-tone row which has its origins in a hexachord already used by Scriabin and Bartók[1], in this way creating a synthesis of various traditions: East may be East and West may believe it is West, but the two here meet and find themselves deeply interconnected.

In the course of the work the tanpuras very gradually speed up by 33%.

A live version of the work could be realized with 12 tanpuras, choir, string orchestra and percussion.

van Dillen, with a background of years of studies in Hindustani music, has long had a vision of a larger work featuring many tanpuras on many pitch classes, and here it is to last: Indium.

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[1] the magic hexachord, or hexatonic set class.

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