ELIA
MARTIN HALL
CD
NOVEMBER 2001
POUL KRISTENSEN GRAFISK VIRKSOMHED A/S
(ISBN 87-7468-419-1)
In the summer of 2001 Martin Hall was given the honour to write the music for the inauguration ceremony of the Danish-Swedish visual artist Ingvar Cronhammer’s grand-scale monument Elia in Herning (a Danish city), a work of art that was opened to the public on the 27th of September the same year.
A cd with the music was enclosed with the book release about the project. The book itself is available in both Danish and English.
1. Elia (23:10)
Martin Hall: Piano and electronics
The Vista Dome Ensemble: Orchestra
Design: Ingvar Cronhammar
Photo: Eigil Thomsen
Elia is a steel dome that, with a diameter of 60 meters at ground level, rises above the field at Herning. From the top of the dome (about 11 meters up) rise four steel columns, so the total height is approximately 32 meters. Two 10-meter wide stairs are laid on each side of the sculpture. In the middle of the sculpture sits a large gas burner which once during a 19-day period makes an 8,4 meter high and 1 meter wide fire column for about 30 seconds. The timing of the discharge is random and controlled by a computer. The sculpture is designed to receive lightning strikes. When this occurs, the sculpture will respond with an echo of approximately 40 seconds duration.
Martin Hall’s composition Elia is a 23-minute long orchestral work with a main theme played by a piano. You can read more about the installation as well as listen to the music here:
“It is both awe-inspiring and thought-provoking to stand here. What is the idea of all this grandiosity? Thus asked Mr. Ivar Hansen, Speaker of the Danish Parliament, in a speech at the September 2001 inauguration of the colossal sculpture, Elia. He speculated that Elia might be a comment on the present or that, perhaps, it looks unfathomably into our future. Ivar Hansen gave the answer himself: Elia is exactly what we make of it. Art reaches out to the diversity of the individual.”