En Lys Time / A Light Hour

Per Nørgård's En Lys Time / A Light Hour (2009) for a variable Percussion Ensemble (min. 10 players).

In A Light Hour everything - rhythms and motifs – isbased on Nørgård´s special infinity series.

Parts available: WH30964A

Programme note

A Light Hour is for ‘any number of percussion musicians’(but a minimum of ten). The duration is about 60 minutes. The instrumentation is in principle open, as long as percussion is used within the three types specified in the score: skin, metal and wood. Each musician uses twosoundsources with two different sounds, one of which is bright (or light) and the other dark. Certain passages also include tuned percussion instruments – vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, gamelan, glockenspiel, steel drums,crotales and the like. 

The work integrates and combines a number of rhythms that Nørgård has used in percussion works since the 1970s, for example in Early Spring Dance (for choir and percussion), andpercussion works like I Ching, Easy Beats, Whirls, Zigzag, Nemo Dynamo and Echo Zone I-II-III. 

Special “tone-feasts” (the composer’s term) – followed by a rest – are anrecognizable 
melodic feature of the work.: the first minute end with a short tone-feast (and a rest), the first four minutes end with a tone-feast lasting a minute (and a rest), the first quarter of an hour ends with atone-feast of four minutes (and a rest) – and the work ends with a tone-feast lasting quarter of an hour (and a rest, when the work is over ...). 

The first 15 minutes have a bright, light characterthroughout, and alternate between 
rhythms and melodic play. The following 15 minutes are more insistent and decidedly 
percussion-based, Afro-Cuban, whereas the third quarter of A Light Hour moves in the