Eivind Buene

Eivind Buene works in parallel as a composer and writer of fiction. In both practices he takes an interest in large formal progressions, whether in a musical cycle like Possible Cities/Essential Landscapes (2005-2009) or in the choice of the novel as a literary format. Constructing such sequences over a long period requires a conscious relationship with the past, and the idea of composition as dialogue and confrontation with history and tradition is central to Buene’s music. On the one hand the material is subjected to per­mutations and variations whose techniques are rooted in the twentieth century; at the same time it retains enough of its identity to make the dia­logue with history directly accessible in the music. The original is undoubtedly distorted and disturbed, but the disturbances never go so deep that its identity and thus the difference between history and the present disappear. The dialogue between the composed and the impro­vised is another such difference that is regularly manifested in Buene’s music in various collaborations with improvising musicians. Buene’s practice alternates between more purely acoustic music and an expansion of the musical material to include the actual performance situation. Even where the musical structures are unstable and unclear, the unclear is precisely drawn. Work commentaries and other texts expound the music with similar clarity. The moment the music exists – perhaps because it exists – it can also be described.