Rozalie Hirs

Rozalie Hirs (born 7 April 1965) is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music and a poet.

The principal concerns of her work are the adventure of listening, reading, and the imagination.

Rozalie Hirs studied piano and voice from age twelve and seventeen respectively.

For her secondary education, she attended Gymnasium Herkenrath, North Rhine-Westphalia, from 1975 until 1979, and Het Nieuwe Lyceum, Bilthoven, Netherlands, from which she graduated in 1983.

She subsequently studied chemical engineering at the University of Twente, Enschede, completing her Master of Science degree in 1990.

During her science studies she sang leading roles in several opera productions at Muziekschool Enschede, and co-composed and performed songs with her new wave band Boolean.

From 1991 to 1992 she studied classical voice with Eugenie Ditewig at Utrechts Conservatorium, from 1992 to 1994 with Gerda van Zelm at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

From 1991 until 1998 Hirs studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague: from 1991 until 1994 with Diderik Wagenaar, from 1994 until 1998 with Louis Andriessen, occasionally taking additional composition lessons with Gilius van Bergeijk and Clarence Barlow.

She holds a Master of Music degree from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

From 1999 until 2002 she furthered her education in composition with the French Spectralist Tristan Murail at Columbia University New York.

In 2002 Hirs took part in the Computer music and composition course at IRCAM, taught by Mikhail Malt (OpenMusic), Benjamin Thigpen (Max/msp), Jean Lochard (Diphone), and Marco Stroppa (OMChroma).

Hirs developed the course OpenMusic and contemporary compositional techniques which she taught in collaboration with Nieuw Ensemble during the 2005-06 academic year at Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of the Arts.

She obtained her Doctor of Musical Arts title from Columbia University in 2007.

Her dissertation consisted of the composition Platonic ID, commissioned by Asko Ensemble, and an essay about the compositional techniques Tristan Murail developed for Le lac.

During the 2010-11 academic year, Hirs was Visiting lecturer at the Department of Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

In 2010, her CD "Pulsars" was released.

During the Autumn semester of 2017, Hirs was Visiting professor at the Department of Composition at Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

She has also taught Creative Writing courses and workshops at Kunstwelten, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Vormstudies, Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam School of the Arts.

A prolific composer, Rozalie Hirs has collaborated with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Asko/Schönberg, Quatuor Bozzini, Holland Festival, November Music, among others.

Hirs's compositional techniques reveal a seemingly scientific approach, characterized by the incorporation of psychoacoustic effects, acoustic analysis of recorded sound, acoustic laws of sounding bodies, as well as mathematical functions.

The listening experience itself, however, always remains central during the compositional process.

Her music is essentially spectral.

The music of Rozalie Hirs reveals a love for sound and refined structures, in combination with a classic approach to form characteristic of the Hague School: ''The uninitiated listener does not need to concern herself with the mathematical skeleton underlying Rozalie Hirs's music.

The composer reveals the soft gleaming skin of sounds in her music and poetry.''

In In LA she uses the psychoacoustic Cocktail party effect (discovered by Colin Cherry in the fifties) as a metaphor of how we remember.

In Book of Mirrors and Roseherte she investigates the use of the psychoacoustic effect of hearing combination tones when we are exposed to pitch intervals.

The acoustic laws of sounding strings are investigated in article 4 through harmonics and their placements on the string.

In Platonic ID Hirs used the ratios mentioned by Plato in the Timaeus (1:2:4:8 and 1:3:9:27) in order to generate her basic harmonic material.

The present music notational system is based on twelve-tone equal temperament, corresponding to semitones, meaning that not all frequencies and pitches may be captured.

Expanding the present system to a 24-tone or even 48-tone tempered tuning, corresponding to a resolution of a quarter tone and an eighthtone respectively, will lead to a larger choice of pitches, yet still entails approximation of frequencies into a notational grid (quantification).

Hirs composes her music in a continuum of frequencies.

She thus uses the calculated frequencies and other musical parameters to generate electronic sounds as well as the instrumental score performed live.

When notating the scores of Book of Mirrors and Roseherte Hirs started out approximating the frequencies to the nearest halftone.

During the creative process of composing Roseherte Hirs decided to approximate into quarter tones.

Since then many of her compositions have been notated in quarter tones.

The electronic sounds in Hirs's compositions are synthesized using the unapproximated frequencies and provide a means of reference for the musician during rehearsal and performance.

In this way the role of the electronic sounds is two-fold, both as constituent to the music as well as a reference base for the performer: the electronic sounds shape the overall music and inform the instrumentalist how to adjust the intonation of the written pitches.

Playing with sound in multiple layers of meaning and with multiple possibilities for reading leads to a ‘fluid’ poetry.

Among these layers, the reader may choose again and again, thus to a large extent shaping his own reading experience.

A multiplicity of reading possibilities and identities has become Hirs’ poetical trademark, forming a bridge to her music.