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Rolf Wallin:
ning(1995)
for oboe/english horn, violin, viola, and cello
The title and concept behind the piece comes from David Grossmann's novel "see under: love", in which he among other things describes a man who joins a school of salmon on its way through the oceans. He swims, eats and sleeps together with them, and gradually he understands the forces that make this large group of fish swim almost as one body.
One of these forces is a cohesive, joining force called ning. In my oboe quartet, the four instruments act very much like fish or birds in a group, sometimes moving fast and close to eachother, with one clear direction, then all of a sudden the group dissolves to four separate individuals, finding their own paths within a wider area, but still dependent on oneanother. Ning is the fourth in a series of pieces where I use socalled fractal mathematics in the prosess of composition.