The Guild of Carillonneurs

in North America
the greatest trees are cut down

Ellen Arkbro

2022
ARKBRO, ELLEN
(born 1990)

Ellen Arkbro is a composer, musician and sound artist from Stockholm, Sweden. She studied with La
Monte Young in Dream House in New York, as well as with Marc Sabat at Universität Der Künste in
Berlin. She works with precision-tuned intervallic harmony. Her work includes compositions for
acoustic instruments and for synthetic sound, and for combinations of both, as well as installation
work. Her site-specific organ harmonies has been presented in spaces such as Barbican in London,
Kölner Philharmonie in Cologne, Museo de Arte Contemporanea Serralves in Porto, Tempelaukkio
Kirke in Helsinki and Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. In all of her work, Arkbro focuses on the qualities
of harmonic sound that reveal listening as an active process of creative participation, inviting the lis-
tener to gradually transform into the sound itself.

Notes on the greatest trees are cut down

Dynamics: Most of the music that I compose is meant to be played in some kind of medium intensity
dynamic and without significant dynamic changes. Most often I intentionally do not write out the
dynamics, but instead let it be something that the performer can work with in the space in an intui-
tive way. This is also the case for this piece. I want the full sound of the bells to come through, in all
its complexity, while neither being perceived as particularly loud or soft. The sound of the bells in
each individual chord should blend together as much as possible, for every chord to be perceived as
one unified sound; timbrally balanced yet harmonically complex.

Durations: The onset of every chordal sound is marked by the notation of the pitches to be played
without further specification of how long a particular chord is held. This is because every chord
should decay naturally in its own full duration without being actively silenced by the performer. The
notation of durations between the onsets of the chords are instead given entirely by the structure of
shifting time signatures.

Instrument specificity: The first and current version of this work was composed specifically to be
performed on the carillon at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago. For future
realisations on other instruments the score will have to be adapted for the sonic characteristics of the
instrument. In a way similar to how the current version was composed, a future version would be
recomposed by me, after listening closely to the harmonic interactions of the particular sounds and
combination of sounds of the bells of the given instrument. Most, if not all, of which are entirely
unique with their own set of limitations and possibilities.
 © 2022 by The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America
This downloaded copy was purchased at www.gcna.org and may only be used by the legal owner of this single copy.