Joep Franssens' New Spirituality

When one crisis follows up another like threatening cloud formations in an autumn storm, you can feel the need to look for shelter. To clear your mind for a moment. To be submerged in rest. Time to recover. To shake off the uneasy, rushed feeling. It seems like Joep Franssens’ music embodies that shelter. Long sustained notes, chords that invoke serenity, that focus rambling thoughts - like in his major choral work Harmony of the Spheres. There is a spiritual aspect to this work. With Franssens’ approval, his music can be classified as the New Spirituality.

However, he says: ‘This spirituality is not about higher powers that stand above mankind. Rather, it is about the godliness that can be found in the people themselves: the male and the female element that ideally should be in balance.’ This can be heard in his music. The coming together of, on the one hand, robustness and postulation, and on the other grace and sensitivity. In Grace, Franssens’ composition that will be premiered during the ZaterdagMatinee on 18 October, these elements also come into play. The title refers both to the girl name and to the meaning of inspiration. Not as grace that is bestowed from above, but as something that comes from within.

In his music Franssens does not try to express the individual words of the text – these distract from the actual meaning – but rather he tries to express the essence of the words. Thus the need to understand every word becomes less important. Franssens: ‘I don’t want to put an aesthetic experience into words. They would only stand in the way of the experience.’