Peter Eötvös - zeroPoints (Audio + Full Score)

Peter Eötvös - zeroPoints, for orchestra (1999)

Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Conductor - Peter Eötvös

zeroPoints 0.1 - 0:00
zeroPoints 0.2 - 2:14
zeroPoints 0.3 - 3:34
zeroPoints 0.4 - 5:18
zeroPoints 0.5 - 8:00
zeroPoints 0.6 - 8:52
zeroPoints 0.7 - 11:04
zeroPoints 0.8 - 12:07
zeroPoints 0.9 - 13:25

From the composer's website:

"I wrote this orchestral piece on commission for the London Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Boulez in 2000. It is an unusual task, a special honour for a composer-conductor to write music for another composer-conductor.
Since the eighties I have often conducted Boulez´Domaines, and I still wonder why he begins bar-numbering with O instead of the accustomed 1. Out of respect for the master I dared only aim at the interspace between 0 and 1, thus the titles of the movements run from 0.1, 0.2, … to 0.9, without ever reaching the number 1.

zeroPoints has other personal associations as well. Nostalgic memories bind me to the audio recordings of the fifties and sixties – the years of my childhood – which formed and determined my musical thinking in a fundamental way. Technical noise was a natural by-product of recording, of the audio technology of that time. These sound-memories appear in several of my works – for example, the hissing and crackling of old LPs at the end of the movements of Atlantis. The “LP-noise” imitation at the beginning of zeroPoints derives from the same source – but today, in the age of faultless technology, it had to be produced artificially, using double-bass tremolos. The clarinet signals that start the piece correspond to the 1kHz countdown sinus signals used in film music recordings.
This, too, leads to the zero point: 3-2-1-0, and thus music starts from zero…"

- Peter Eötvös

[BenjaminStaern]

I remember listening to it
live with Eötvös himself conducting in during Stockholm New Music and it was mindblowing already!

[szilardszilagyicomposer]

One of the best hungarian composer in my opinion. Very nice piece. Thank you for the upload!

[ContemporaryClassical]

Thanks so much Ryan. I want to hear a whole lot more Eötvös

[stephenjablonsky]

This is an interesting piece. It is the product of a brilliant mind and does lots of amazing things. It does everything except get you to sing along. This has all the flash of fireworks but not a single moment of memorable melody. That makes it very modern but nothing lingers in your mind except the violence you witnessed....and now Peter is gone.

[DominikMueck]

might not be the best piece for Eurovision...