Issuu

Josefine Opsahl

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE

for Piano Trio

(2025)

Score

Josefine Opsahl HYPERTOPIA UNDONE

for Piano Trio (2025)

Duration: c. 20 min.

Commissioned by Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival.

First Performance by Trio Gaspard July 18th, 2025.

Full Score

Music engraving in Sibelius

Publisher’s editor: Rasmus Koppelhus

Edition Wilhelm Hansen, A/S

Bornholmsgade 1A 1266 København K Denmark

www.wisemusicclassical.com

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE is the undoing of the “HYPERTOPIA” we are living in - a pumped up, accelerating society and state of the collective mind characterized by increasingly exaggerated, repetitive and meaningless hyperactivity.

The modern society’s obsession with economic growth and strive for supremacy has led to an increasing pressure on its inhabitants - constantly demanding more extreme and multifaceted abilities, higher production capacity, more efficiency and at a constantly increasing pace. Machines were invented to redeem the high demands by extending the possibilities of the human body and mind, and hereby push efficiency forward. But instead of solving problems, these new mechanical and digital entities established new productivity standards and made human beings push themselves even furtherbeyond the boundaries of what the human body, mind and senses are capable of and can endure.

The consequences and signs of exhaustion are showing both internally: psychologically and emotionally as well as externally: in the communities and environments that surround us. Balances and mutual respect between body and mind, individuals, communities society, other species and entities, culture and nature are distorted and is leading to growing meaninglessness, ignorance, brutality, wars and unnecessary terror. Man is standing on the brink of self-destruction and the deep devastating acknowledgement of how mankind’s behavior might have irrevocably damaged balances in nature - yet still, we manically push forward.

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE is a manifestation of a deep need to confront this crisis - to process it, let go and to heal the broken connections and call for a different society.

Inspired by Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival’s festival theme 2025: ‘Nordic Utopia’, HYPERTOPIA UNDONE seeks to heal the broken natural connections, balances and communities of our cosmology by looking to the connection with the ancient wisdom of the Nordic Nature and its natural processes.

Through four movements the current HYPERTOPIA society is depicted, examined, confronted, undone and the potential foundation for a new restored utopian cosmic balance is evoked.

Movement I. HYPER

The movement starts off with rapid and mechanical, repetitive rhythms. The three players are kept in a rigid, metronomic grid and only produce toneless or seemingly ‘meaningless sounds’ that lost track of tonality and collective resonance - only producing sounds that support and maintain the hyperactive societal order. Small disturbances arise in the matrix and slowly but surely spread and escalate between the three parts. The already pressurized individuals are forced to work harder and faster.

Movement II. TOPIA

Intoxicated by the hyperactivity and adrenaline and pushing towards the boundaries of what is possible for the human body and mind to endure, the three players briefly transcends into another dimension and clearly encounter a beautiful potential society. But HYPERTOPIA eventually calls them back and pushes them further towards complete exhaustion, collapse and destruction.

Movement III. UN

A deep, organic, ancient natural Nordic simplicity and force awakens and evokes waves of both beauty, complete destruction, change, transcendence and transformation.

Movement IV. DONE

To let go, let dissolve, die and transcent gives room for natural and universal balances to restore itself and mildly call for peace and balance.

Movement V. EPILOGUE (Imagine Utopia)

The EPILOGUE paints a soft, quiet, meditative space of peace, coexistence, community, openness and freedom - a glimpse of what a Nordic Utopia could sound like.

Josefine Opsahl,

2025

HYPERTOPIAUNDONE

I. HYPER

ricchochetverticale(secco) sullapuntadell'arco moltosulpont mutestringswithlightpressureLH

ricchochetverticale(secco) sullapuntadellarco moltosulpont mutestringswithlightpressureLH

Violin

Violoncello Tui Voices

Mutestringsinsidepiano withlefthandwhilepressingdown thekeysasindicated

Keepnoteuntilthe lastsoundofthepiano ringsout