Zeynep Toraman
composition | film music | theory
bio • works • calendar • listen • contact
<<
Castle Terraces in Barry Lyndon [clarinet, e-guitar, violin, cello, electronics and film]
Written for and Premiered by Ensemble Contrechamps
[2023]
![]()
November 30th SONIC MATTER in Zurich, CH
Clarinet - Laurent Bruttin
E-Guitar - Simon Aeschimann
Violin - Max Haft
Cello - Martina Brodbeck
Film by Burak Çevik
Dear B,
In this second-to-last month of the year, I am thinking of you very often. I’ve also been thinking about the lines from Rilke, where he asks Kappus: “Why would you want to exclude from your life all disturbance, pain and dejection, since after all you don’t know what work these states are doing upon you?” Thinking of endurance as a form of sustain. As a way to address some unspeakable aspect of being alive. When I first watched your film, this is what stuck with me, your addressing of this unarticulated thing by way of Cézanne.
Also what endures between these two people - an incomplete love, but also not love, a form of attachment and alliance, and moreover maybe this thing which can survive in a hostile environment somehow. But also an ode to the complete intertwining of art and love and things that get lost in-between, but also the things that never get lost. Serres writes somewhere that “Growth and phantasm often go hand in hand.” (I almost want to apologize for still speaking of ghosts here, but I know it is a mutual interest of ours.)
While watching this scene, I of course remembered that I have a copy of Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne. I tried to read it a few years ago. I had to stop not even halfway through. I simply couldn’t get into it. I picked it off the shelf last month and this time the pages (and time) flew by.
I guess I am writing to you now, because I know you will understand. Ever since I started thinking of my silence as a gift to others, and in relation to that, my sustained optimism as a gift to myself, things started becoming a bit lighter.
Then again why write a theme and variations?
Is this piece anything more than my (perhaps very personal - as if there could be any other way to interact with it) take on this form? And my sense that this form ultimately is about endurance.
composition | film music | theory
bio • works • calendar • listen • contact
<<
Castle Terraces in Barry Lyndon [clarinet, e-guitar, violin, cello, electronics and film]
Written for and Premiered by Ensemble Contrechamps
[2023]
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8c29fb628f717fb42d0fea0357779cc7ce8ff574e3fd402f67a504cee598f8ca/photo_5971908814431174025_y.jpg)
November 30th SONIC MATTER in Zurich, CH
Clarinet - Laurent Bruttin
E-Guitar - Simon Aeschimann
Violin - Max Haft
Cello - Martina Brodbeck
Film by Burak Çevik
Dear B,
In this second-to-last month of the year, I am thinking of you very often. I’ve also been thinking about the lines from Rilke, where he asks Kappus: “Why would you want to exclude from your life all disturbance, pain and dejection, since after all you don’t know what work these states are doing upon you?” Thinking of endurance as a form of sustain. As a way to address some unspeakable aspect of being alive. When I first watched your film, this is what stuck with me, your addressing of this unarticulated thing by way of Cézanne.
Also what endures between these two people - an incomplete love, but also not love, a form of attachment and alliance, and moreover maybe this thing which can survive in a hostile environment somehow. But also an ode to the complete intertwining of art and love and things that get lost in-between, but also the things that never get lost. Serres writes somewhere that “Growth and phantasm often go hand in hand.” (I almost want to apologize for still speaking of ghosts here, but I know it is a mutual interest of ours.)
While watching this scene, I of course remembered that I have a copy of Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne. I tried to read it a few years ago. I had to stop not even halfway through. I simply couldn’t get into it. I picked it off the shelf last month and this time the pages (and time) flew by.
I guess I am writing to you now, because I know you will understand. Ever since I started thinking of my silence as a gift to others, and in relation to that, my sustained optimism as a gift to myself, things started becoming a bit lighter.
Then again why write a theme and variations?
Is this piece anything more than my (perhaps very personal - as if there could be any other way to interact with it) take on this form? And my sense that this form ultimately is about endurance.