• for carillon

• Duration: 11' 45"
• In one movement
• Composed in 2021

Just as bold Europeans ventured out at sea to circumnavigate our blue planet in the XIV^th and XV^th c., daring space exploration is the dream of our times. This project combines science, new music, bells and heritage, all in which I take a lively interest. Science, because science connects us at the conscious factual level. Until disproven, a fact is a fact. Music and new music, because music connects us at the unconscious level. Until played, a piece of music is stillborn. New music, because an art form without new artwork is doomed. Bells because their acoustic properties are astoundingly complex regardless of their cultural context. Bells superbly ignore the staccato, the ultimate reduction of the infinite legato. Heritage, because I do not own anything. I receive from previous generations and I pass on to the next generations.

One hears that what one wants to hear. One hears that what one can hear.

High up in his tower, the carillonneur plays for the whole town. The carillon’s sonic lace shields the town. The carillonneur rhapsodizes for the astronaut racing towards Mars, hence the subtitle of this piece. The title ΄ΑΠΕΙΡΟΝ (pronounce Apeiron) refers to the unlimited, indeterminate or primal principle of all matter already postulated by Anaximander. My composition contains the same number of motives as the planets in our solar system. The piece starts and ends with the pitch that is the exact center of the carillon’s range. I refer to Georges Lemaître’s primeval atom, the postulate he published in 1933. This central pitch disintegrates into clusters, as in Lemaître’s relativistic cosmology (his theory on the expansion of the universe published in 1927 and popularly referred to since the 50s by the misnomer, the Big Bang’s theory). Soon the clusters morph into a joyous dance like matter floating in the space. The celebrated astrophysicist’s sonic anagram forms calls sent out over the city and metaphorically into space. I assigned pitches to the planetary-rotation periods of the Jovian planets to form a majestic bass line. At one single point, the music flow freezes into a grave reference to Lemaître’s second life calling, his staunch Christian faith. To him religion and science are peacefully compatible. I quote celebrated XVIII^th c. carillonneur and bell founder Matthias Vanden Gheyn. On his music, I applied rhythmical planetary-rotation period of the four telluric planets. ΄ΑΠΕΙΡΟΝ ends in a celebratory, energetic and optimist mood.