Ten Holt: Incantatie IV for three pianos

Dutch minimalist icon Simeon ten Holt, who recently passed away at the age of 89, studied composition with, among others, Honegger and Milhaud. After exploring serialist techniques in the 1960s, he began to focus on more conventional styles of composition from the 70s onwards – concentrating on tone and timbre in particular – and it is from this period (between 1976 and 1998) in Ten Holt’s wide-ranging career that the Incantatie IV for three pianos dates. Widely famed for his Canto Ostinato, written in five layers, the composer’s Incantatie IV for three pianos stands out for its complexity and is made up of no less than 15 layers for multiple keyboards. Both pieces allow the performers to decide upon the final form of the music, but Incantatie IV leaves much more open; with timbre and pitch, style of play and tempo, number of voices or instruments, and the amount of repetitions all left to the players’ discretion, the length of the composition is undetermined and the piece effectively exists in a grey area between composed and improvised music.