Stilleven (2017)
Honorable Mention: Tribeca New Music 2019
Instrumentation: string trio
Duration: ca. 10'
First performed: July 31st, 2018 at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Brunswick, ME
​
I. Banketjen
II. Ijdelheid
Program Note
This work was inspired by the still lifes of the great Dutch and Flemish painters of the 16th and 17th centuries. The titles of the two movements evoke two themes of many of these paintings. A banketjen (banquet piece) was a specific genre of still life, which depicted both literal representations of sumptuous, half-eaten feasts (suggesting a dinner party which has long since ended) and served as a symbolic, religious reminder to avoid materialism and gluttony. Ijdelheid (Dutch for “vanity” or “futility”) pays homage to the “vanitas” still lifes, in which lavish arrangements of fruit, flowers, and other objects are paired with such symbols as skulls or hourglasses, serving as reminders of life’s ephemerality.