Nils Henrik Asheim & Johan Harstad: Grader Av Hvitt / Degree

Grader av hvitt, Degrees of White, Composer Nils Henrik Asheim, Author Johan Harstad, Narrators Laila Goody and Petronella Barker, Noise musician Lasse Marhaug, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Conductor Christian Eggen, Orchestral work, Drama, Contemporary music.

In his orchestral work Degrees of White (2006), composer Nils Henrik Asheim invites an author, an actor, and a noise musician into the symphony orchestra.

The orchestral work allows the frost and the stark whiteness to be expressed in several ways. The work consists of four parts. The color white is explicitly introduced early in the first section, when a recording of the actor's voice complements the small outbursts in the orchestra, with the words "White. In the white." Within the orchestral landscape we find the winds placed into three groups, each containing both woodwinds and brass, creating a sound more uniform across the room. A quartet, plucked out of the string section, lies far ahead within the soundscape, with musical material consisting of short, pale white tones and friction sounds.