Description
Lasse Thoresen: “Tosomt (Zu zweit)” (Op. 56C) for Violin and Double Bass
(2024)
In this work for Violin and Double Bass, commissioned by Helge Slaatto and Frank Reinecke, I have worked with a tonal material derived from the harmonics that the strings of the Double Bass can produce. The tuning of many strings on the Double Bass and Violin have been altered to produce a harmonic-sounding, justly intoned scale spanning several octaves.
TOSOMT I ‘Serenissimo’ is a quiet movement. Tones emerge from hissing noise and recede back into it. The work alludes to a meditative state of mind on the brink between full consciousness and sleep—precisely at the point where consciousness barely opens to the world of phenomena.
TOSOMT II ‘Energico’ is a vital, dancing play with tonal spectra produced by different bow positions on the string and passages over open, retuned strings. The alternating rising and falling movement in timbral spectrum and tonal register can be associated with the notion of a pillar within the individual person and in the person’s outer soul-space that connects lower and higher worlds.
Lasse Thoresen, 2025
Commissioned by Helge Slaatto and Frank Reinecke.
This edition is supported by the Norwegian Society of Composers.
