Oscar van Dillen
Ever since I graduated april 2002 in classical composition, with the composition (including live video-projection) Memos for a new Millennium for Disklavier with player which was part of my final exam portfolio, I have been finding ways to work with artists in different disciplines: museal theater, sculpture, 3D live animation, fashion design, animation movie, video installation, as well as a new string quartet to Joris Ivens' film “De Brug” from 1928. Since 2006 I have regularly worked with Canadian poet, artist and filmmaker Clive Holden, on various projects: films, surround-sound video-installations and web-based art, all aiming at an equality between sound and vision. Many times it was the music which inspired a project, as was the case in the animation film Forecast were the music was conceived and composed as the actual story-teller to the storyboard before the actual visuals were created. Works were commissioned by various institutions.
I come from a family of architects, with strong interests in art. As a child I saw among other things for example the large exhibitions of the works of Jeroen Bosch, of Brancusi and of Giacometti in the Netherlands, and grew up on a rather remarkable musical diet consisting of Baroque and 20th Century music, supplemented by Jazz and World Music, receiving classical music and flute training since I was 7 years old. Having a strong connection to the visual arts in general, after high school I started out studying architecture while never being without (parallel at times) music study as well. I decided finally to not pursue a career as a visual artist (I also painted and had had a first exhibition in a multidisciplinary cooperation with later fellow composer Isak Goldschneider) but instead devote all my time and energy to the creation of music.
I am a member of Componisten 96. My "official" musical studies concern North Indian classical music, Jazz, Medieval music, Renaissance music and Western classical music. Personally I have a strong link in general to the actual performance of music, not solely because I have performed myself both as a flutist and conductor, but especially since in my opinion the performer is the ultimate person to create the reality of what music is: ''a real-time art''. My own musical scores bear witness to this, see for this also what Ulrich Dibelius' wrote about my Chamber Symphony De Stad in his article “Komponisten im Sog des Globalen. Zu einigen Veränderungen” (MusikTexte - Heft Nr. 117, 2008).
My work is strongly inspired by World music. My ''melodic treatment'' is highly influenced by Indian classical music, as is my treatment of ''musical time'' in the broadest sense. My ''rhythmic treatment'' is both additive and divisive in nature, and can be traced to many rhythmic traditions especially in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans. My ''harmonic treatment'', refined by studies ranging from Medieval music to Wagner, from Pygmy music to the works of John Coltrane, ever originating in concentrated listening to overtones in intervals, voices or instruments, is a synthesis of anti-tonality with an expanded intuitive modality. I am always looking for special ''timbres'' created by simultaneous sounds, as can be seen in my scores, which contain many subtle playing instructions. My ''form treatment'' is free yet clear: awareness of form is created purely by memory, and I deliberately use many silences as well. To create music, especially as a composer, one needs to let go of all thinking in "fixed systems", whether known or new - and rather control such matters as ''discipline, method and attitude'' instead, as these are inwardly-directed parameters. I consider music to be primarily a ''real time-art'' as well as a ''real-time art'', intended to allow listeners to participate live in the creation, as co-perceivers, satisfying three basic human "instincts": ''wonder, inquisitiveness and a sense of delight''.
''All Art Creates Content'', and Music could perhaps be the only human "language" which explains itself immediately in the very process of listening.
Since 1997 I have been teaching at Codarts University for the Arts, Rotterdam, where I developed the Academy-minor “World Music Composition in Practice”, there I also teach (Western: Jazz and Classical) music-theory and am a thesis-counselor.
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Oscar van Dillen liked Earth by Michael König
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Oscar van Dillen liked F Movie by Clive Holden
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