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In the course of my professional life, the main focus of my work had lain on being a side man, arranging/composing and performing for/with other people. While I had found a great deal of satisfaction doing so, I felt that I had put aside if not sometimes forgotten the question of how to nourish and broaden my creative potential and initiate projects of my own. My dream was and still is to strengthen and discover my own voice as composer and arranger within the Latin genre and beyond, giving my creativity the necessary room and musical nourishment to flourish and making writing/arranging the core activity of my professional musicianship, as performer of my own music and writing for others. For my research I decided to focus on the works of a great arranger and a great contemporary composer: Clare Fischer and Olivier Messiaen. I got first acquainted to Fischer’s works, when I saw him give a workshop at Codarts in 2001 and was deeply touched by his music , which seemed simple and complex at the same time. Already back then I was intrigued by his often very surprising harmonisation of simple melodies and his use of unconventional voicings. Having played the organ as an adolescent, I vaguely knew some works of Messiaen, but did not really appreciate them at the time. Later I heard “Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus” and was fascinated by the organic coexistence of atonal passages and late romantic harmony and the use of musical forms and variable rhythm that were totally new to me. Choosing the topic of my research, I presumed that the study of Fischer’s work would especially broaden my horizon as an arranger, while the research on Messiaen would help to open up my potential to be creative as a composer. Obviously, it is not always possible to strictly separate composing from arranging, and I hoped that the insights I could gain from both would be complementary. Thus, I formulated the following research question: How can I strengthen my voice as a composer/arranger, studying the musical language of Olivier Messiaen and the way it is influenced by the narrative aspect within his writing, and the use of voicings and harmony in the arrangements/compositions of pianist Clare Fischer?

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    • Thomas Böttcher
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    In the course of my professional life, the main focus of my work had lain on being a side man, arranging/composing and performing for/with other people. While I had found a great deal of satisfaction doing so, I felt that I had put aside if not sometimes forgotten the question of how to nourish and broaden my creative potential and initiate projects of my own. My dream was and still is to strengthen and discover my own voice as composer and arranger within the Latin genre and beyond, giving my creativity the necessary room and musical nourishment to flourish and making writing/arranging the core activity of my professional musicianship, as performer of my own music and writing for others. For my research I decided to focus on the works of a great arranger and a great contemporary composer: Clare Fischer and Olivier Messiaen. I got first acquainted to Fischer’s works, when I saw him give a workshop at Codarts in 2001 and was deeply touched by his music , which seemed simple and complex at the same time. Already back then I was intrigued by his often very surprising harmonisation of simple melodies and his use of unconventional voicings. Having played the organ as an adolescent, I vaguely knew some works of Messiaen, but did not really appreciate them at the time. Later I heard “Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus” and was fascinated by the organic coexistence of atonal passages and late romantic harmony and the use of musical forms and variable rhythm that were totally new to me. Choosing the topic of my research, I presumed that the study of Fischer’s work would especially broaden my horizon as an arranger, while the research on Messiaen would help to open up my potential to be creative as a composer. Obviously, it is not always possible to strictly separate composing from arranging, and I hoped that the insights I could gain from both would be complementary. Thus, I formulated the following research question: How can I strengthen my voice as a composer/arranger, studying the musical language of Olivier Messiaen and the way it is influenced by the narrative aspect within his writing, and the use of voicings and harmony in the arrangements/compositions of pianist Clare Fischer?
  • Thomas Böttcher - From Clare Fischer to Olivier Messiaen: Broadening my creative potential as composer / arranger - 2017
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