A Miniature Index of Romanticisms
scored for violin and piano
duration 25 minutes
A Miniature Index of Romanticisms unfolds as a continuous stream of thought rather than as a narrative. The music follows an essayistic, literary logic, based on the coexistence of ideas and atmospheres. Romanticism appears here not as a historical style, but as a collection of attitudes and sensibilities that touch and question one another.
In …a reminiscence of sophisticated passions…, desire emerges as a vivid, lifelike memory, refined and tempered. …a secret fragment of tender delicacy… turns its gaze toward vulnerability and tenderness, to the fragile threshold where authenticity and kitsch unmistakably meet. In About Obsessions, romantic thinking manifests itself as persistent fixation. About Planets Orbiting and Radiant Stars ultimately opens the perspective: the human scale that dominated the earlier movements is now overwhelmed by a monstrous sense of the Sublime.
I. ...a reminiscence of sophisticated passions…
II. …a secret fragment of tender delicacy… (about kitsch)
III. About Obsessions
IV. About Planets Orbiting and Radiant Stars
A Miniature Index of Romanticisms is dedicated to Nikolaas Kende, Jolente De Maeyer and their daughter Mona. They performed the piece for the first time on June 28, 2018 at deSingel, Antwerp (Belgium).
Klassiek Centraal: That concert with those songs and also a composition for piano and violin as a gift for the first child of the artist couple Jolente De Maeyer and Nikolaas Kende who also performed the work – what an almost frightening thing that reflects the first impressions of what a baby' endured at birth – was of an absolute top level.
I write world class very deliberately. Coppens writes with a strong emotion, which he sets in all forms and tonally quite comprehensible and comprehensible. That is an example of how contemporary art can and may be. In fact, Coppens may well be doing what Mozart did: giving musical expression to all the emotions, feelings, influences and whatever else a person is continuously subjected to. Few are given to do it this way and those who can have something of genius and if so, then Matthias Coppens and Mozart find each other again. And just like Mozart, Coppens managed to attract the ideal singer to give his work, in this case that wonderful song cycle, its world premiere.