After composing UR in 1986, composer Magnus Lindberg was silent for two years, a very long pause for someone just embarking on a career in music. The exploratory, somewhat aggressive sound world of his earlier scores (like Kraft) had clearly reached the end of its fascination for the composer. What he sought, by way of developing a more supple, mature style, was the means to integrate traditional harmonic concerns into a contemporary context. In other words, he wanted to combine meaningful consonance and dissonance. In 1988, Lindberg embarked on a series of three ambitious scores for orchestra or large ensemble, in which he presented the fruits of his reflection. Kinetics was completed in 1989, followed a year later by Marea. Joy, the longest of the three, was written in the fall of that same year and was premiered in December 1990, by the Ensemble InterContemporain, by whom it was commissioned.

Joy is scored for a mixed ensemble of 23 musicians and includes substantial parts for electronic sounds performed using a synthesizer linked to a sampler. The sampled sounds were derived from recordings Lindberg made as he destroyed an old piano with sledgehammers. These sounds, it should be said, have been processed on the computer, so that the source is difficult to recognize. The one exception is in a relatively exposed spot, at about the halfway point of the piece, where distorted piano sounds are heard unaccompanied (returning briefly just before the end). For the most part, the electronic sounds are strongly integrated into the instrumental textures. The synthesizer and piano, along with percussion, are featured prominently throughout the piece, though one wouldn't call them concertante parts. The music proceeds continuously through a series of linked sections, some more active and others more sustained. Lindberg carries on his preoccupation with rhythmic interpolations, layering contrasting trajectories to create complex textures. What is new in Joy is the unabashed embracing of richly consonant harmonies. There are clear bass-line progressions in certain passages that carry strong tonal implications. But, always, complex chromatic material grows out of the higher partials of the sound and often carry the music on to different registers and harmonic configurations that no longer sound tonal. On the larger scale, Lindberg organizes the harmonies by means of cycles, so that certain elements return and are recognized.

Joy is generally sonorous and bright, energetic and dramatic. This triptych launched Lindberg's new style that has carried him through a long series of orchestral commissions. Each piece is new, but underlying it is a harmonic foundation that relates directly back to the works of this period of 1988 to 1990.

© James Harley, Rovi