Fagott (Crevace)

Crevace was composed for and premiered by Martin Kuuskmann and Hallfríður „Haffí“ Ólafsdóttir with Iceland Symphony Orchestra on Jan 31st, 2019.

"In the fall of 2015, I took part in glacier measurements in Southeast Iceland, where my brother has been measuring the retreat of the glaciers for several years. Our maternal grandmother was born on a farm in the county of Suðursveit, therefore the place has emotional value within the family. We grew up with stories of life on this small strip of land between the glacier and the sea. The measurement showed, as expected, that like previous years the glaciers had retreated. The earth is going through unprecedented temperature changes the long-term consequences of which are still unknown. Thoughts about the rising temperature of the earth, the melting of the glaciers and the energy that is unleashed, these incomprehensible dimensions that humanity must deal with in near future, mixed with personal reflections about the life of my ancestors in the south-eastern corner of the country and the nature there were my inspiration for the composition.

Crevace is an old French word for fractures in glaciers. I found it resonating with the content of the piece, reminding us that the glaciers have always accompanied mankind. They are massively receding these days, the land area in the South-Eastern corner keeps rising by fourteen millimeters a year due to the weight released by the melting of the glaciers. Scientists' descriptions become almost poetic in this vast context. When the ice on the glacier has thinned so much that it no longer crawls under its own weight, the glacier is said to be dead. Through the layers of the glaciers, you can not only read the years, like with rings in trees, but the ice simultaneously preserves an image of the conditions each year. Glaciologists call this memory. In that sense, it can be said that the glacier remembers, moves, produces sounds, lives and dies."