Affordances presents four works writ­ten by Belgian com­pos­er Heleen van Haegenborgh for UK exper­i­men­tal choral ensem­ble Musarc between 2019 – 25. Scored for voic­es and free melod­ic instru­ments, each piece tunes into a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion of the vibrant and orac­u­lar polypho­ny of the cho­rus, its joy­ful hal­lu­ci­na­tions, its many lan­guages and the many ways it has with the world as a body of bod­ies, sin­gu­lar and plur­al: at times sound­ing restrained and haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, at oth­er times tri­umphant and clear. A new series of minia­tures for vio­lin writ­ten by van Haegenborgh espe­cial­ly for the album seems to look back on the process of mak­ing the music, speak­ing from the mid­dle, like a mnemon­ic cho­rus of one. Recorded over two days in April 2025 at Luca School of Arts, Ghent, Affordances offers a view into Musarc’s qui­et­ly rad­i­cal, and maybe unrecord­able, approach to what a choir can do and the unique space it can cre­ates for artists, musi­cians and singers to devel­op new ideas (J. Kohlmaier)

Release by SN Variations: 21 June 2025
Published by Donemus: 21 June 2025:

The pieces (2019−2025):

Material Affordance (2019) is a piece for mixed choir and recorders with a focus on micro­scop­ic lis­ten­ing, act­ing and concentration. 

The piece starts with a very slow melody. It is sung while blow­ing half into the recorder with the pur­pose to moti­vate the flute pro­duc­ing high sounds which change the colour of the melody and cre­ate an extra lay­er. The slow­ness of the melody in com­bi­na­tion with the flute sounds gives a tex­tur­al impres­sion which trans­forms and becomes a real tex­ture, using a lot of dif­fer­ent tech­niques with voice and recorder (explor­ing the ​‘mate­r­i­al affor­dances’ ). Background and fore­ground change continuously.

The last part forms a big con­trast in tem­po, ener­gy and char­ac­ter. All sub­tle­ness is gone and the whole choir starts walking/​shuffling and singing out loud in a very strict tem­po and extravert flutes. With a clear mission. 

Material Affordance was writ­ten for Musarc and has had it’s pre­mière 5 july 2019 in The Whitechapel Foundry in London, the place where the Big Benn and Liberty Bell were cast. Later tat year it was picked up to be per­formed at the London Contemporary Music festival. 

It’s a piece about the per­cep­tion of the func­tion of an object. About a hid­den util­i­ty, about chang­ing the nat­ur­al way to use things: stairs are to walk on, a cof­fee to drink, a book to read, a foundry to cast bells, a voice to sing and a recorder to blow on. In Material Affordance the recorder pro­duces sounds in alter­na­tive ways. Actively or in a more pas­sive way. Less nat­ur­al than we have learnt. The same with cer­tain voice tech­niques used.

Hidden Affordance (2024), is the sec­ond piece in a series of Affordances for choir. This time mixed with an ensem­ble of (free) melod­ic instru­ments and per­cus­sion. In this piece the com­pos­er exper­i­ment­ed for the first time with the dif­fer­ent lan­guage idea, start­ing from giv­en found texts. The spo­ken pas­sages are found ques­tions from folk­songs. The musi­cal envi­ron­ment is exper­i­men­tal, melod­ic and full of glis­san­di.
Members of the ensem­ble on the record­ing: Inaki Marcos Bueno, Toon Callier, Saori Miraku, Andrea Baccallado, Paul Klinck, Franziska Boehm, Margit Kraft, Ada Egg Koskiluoma and Andy Cowtone. 

Possible Affordance (2025) is the 3^rd piece in a series of Affordances for mixed choir a cap­pel­la, com­posed for Musarc, the quirky choir full of artists and archi­tects
The many dif­fer­ent moth­er tongues in the choir led the com­pos­er to con­tin­ue the dif­fer­ent-lan­guage-idea she had start­ed in Hidden Affordance. Each musi­cian is tasked with find­ing words and phras­es of 1 to 13 syl­la­bles in the moth­er tongue. Jet, on the one hand, is a way to approach the piece in an extra per­son­al way and, on the oth­er, to blur the tex­ture and con­tour of the repet­i­tive melodies and repet­i­tive rhythm. The simul­ta­ne­ous sound­ing of dif­fer­ent vow­els, con­so­nants, pro­nun­ci­a­tions sub­tly cre­ates a slight­ly dis­turbed edge around the melody that cre­ates a result­ing vague con­tour, sim­i­lar to the image in a blurred pho­to­graph. In a choir with peo­ple hav­ing all the same native lan­guage, this effect also aris­es.
The engage­ment of a singer is dif­fer­ent with texts that are their own. After the record­ing, record­ing peo­ple came to tell how they approached the text: some­one told how moved she always was singing the piece because she chose to list ani­mals and plants that are becom­ing extinct, some­one else had not sung in Cypriot since her child­hood, some­one else had tak­en quotes from John Cage as text etc. In this way the singers fin­ish the piece themselves. 

The piece exudes ener­gy and with the fact of stack­ing languages/​different words on top of each oth­er, you get the feel­ing of a paint­ing or pho­to­graph not quite in focus. The rhythm and dri­ve is there, but disturbed.

Implicit Affordances (2025) is the 4^th piece in a series of Affordances for mixed choir. Simplicity tri­umphs here. The piece has a part­ly free form and phras­es can be com­bined at will. Two instru­men­tal phras­es can also be includ­ed in the form (on the record played by Paul Klinck).
As in Possible Affordance and Hidden affor­dance for mixed choir, Heleen Van Haegenborgh con­tin­ues using the dif­fer­ent-lan­guage-idea. .
In Possible Affordance, this hap­pens in a large group at a court­ly pace. Implicit Affordance gives time for the idea to hap­pen in sim­ple phras­es with plen­ty of time.
The instru­men­tal moments, which (can) inter­rupt the singing lines were ini­tial­ly writ­ten for the com­poser’s step­fa­ther, Paul Klinck who is one of the best vio­lin­ists she knows.

Letter to Musarc:
April 9, 2025 Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette, (nice address, no?)

Hello Musarc,

Beautiful unique liv­ing organism! 

I want to thank you, ALL. 

What a sur­prise to notice how the monk­ish sole work of com­pos­ing explod­ed in such a won­der­ful social par­ty, on very dif­fer­ent lev­els. So many things came togeth­er there in Carré and the stat­ue gar­den of Sint-Lucas. For you, some gasses might have escaped already in the weeks before on a Tuesday evening rehearsal, but for me every­thing was sò new. It seems I was very present and out­side at the same time.

It over­whelmed me. I was not alone in that. When I arrived, I thought Wim Lambrecht only came to open and close the door but after a while I released he would just stay there and didn’t want to miss a minute of it, fol­low­ing every­thing and just enjoy­ing the extreme­ly pos­i­tive ener­gy and the whole per­for­mance of peo­ple musi­cal­ly and men­tal­ly hard at work. 

Unusual for a record­ing is that there was con­stant­ly a small pub­lic of chang­ing peo­ple: stu­dents, col­leagues, friends. Nice! I am not sure if you are aware, but it was spe­cial to see that dur­ing these 8 hours (for some of you 12) of record­ing, all eyes and ears were con­stant­ly 300% point­ed on Oli. I was touched by the con­stant focus. Where did you still get the ener­gy on Sunday to go and watch the Mystic Lamb? (No! That was fun! Collectively inter­pret­ing Van Eyck!!#toes).

I con­tin­ue with the music.

I am aware that the pre­mieres of the past might have suf­fered a bit from too lit­tle time in com­bi­na­tion with a whole pro­gram to pre­pare, but this expe­ri­ence now, … hear­ing how deep you went into the music, was a warm bath for me. I could lis­ten in such a relaxed way. The music has been reborn with won­der­ful starts and end­ings of phras­es, lis­ten­ing, ded­i­ca­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, almost no vibra­to (jùst right:) … and every­thing from inside (!!!).

I gave you pieces of paper to per­form (sor­ry for the ugly midi files), and what I heard and saw this week­end is how you expe­ri­enced and sang the score from inside. The most beau­ti­ful present for a com­pos­er (and pub­lic). It seems as you are such as much into the sto­ry as I am. You would think that is an evi­dence, but it isn’t. Many musi­cians fall into man­ner­isms, a ​‘cor­rect’ or ​’pro­fes­sion­al’ play­ing, a pas­sive approach with­out tak­ing posi­tion, etc. The only cor­rect way (for me) is from inside. Why else would you sing? Make music? 

The first ver­sion of Material Affordance is already 8 years old and this week­end Yiannis Katsaris, at a moment he wasn’t allowed to click, asked me if these recorders before the face were want­ed :). YES OFF COURSE. The recorders were espe­cial­ly writ­ten for you, visu­al­ly and musi­cal­ly. When I start­ed with the piece I had a cer­tain son­ic image in my head and one of the ques­tions was, How can I cre­ate clas­sic coun­ter­point with some adventurous/​destroyed/​distorted sound world and breath. And that’s where the recorders came in. I had the imag­i­na­tion of a melody, hid­den in a waze. Far. Transformed in some­thing the­atri­cal via a breathy, airy texture. 

When Joseph asked me the first time (actu­al­ly it was the sec­ond time but the first piece was too dif­fi­cult), I was very con­scious that Musarc is not a nor­mal choir — in the sense it is very open- and that I could use my cre­ativ­i­ty how­ev­er I want­ed, I felt very free in that. Musarc (off course the com­bi­na­tion of peo­ple) works very inspir­ing­ly and makes it as one of these projects that helps me to ques­tion things in a very artis­ti­cal­ly free envi­ron­ment. A play­ground to com­pose for. 

One of the start­ing points is the indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of ensem­bles and musi­cians I com­pose for and search for where we can con­nect and chal­lenge each other. 

So, it’s a plea­sure to hear/​see when peo­ple like to play my music, and some of you came to tell me. Thank you. I am so hap­py Joseph saw this com­bi­na­tion of this exot­ic Belgian com­pos­er and Musarc. And kept on see­ing this!! 

Off course my idea is very lim­it­ed because I saw only 2 con­certs, but until recent­ly my idea of​Musarc was an exper­i­men­tal choir, visu­al­ly ori­en­tat­ed, with a nose for inter­est­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions that radi­at­ed cre­ativ­i­ty and adven­ture. And this week­end I heard also the col­lec­tive SOUND and the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters with­in it. Powerful, full, rhyth­mic or lyri­cal at one moment; pianis­si­mo focus at oth­er moments.

I looked a bit strange (amused) when Wim Lambrecht com­pared a cer­tain pas­sage with the music from Bambi (the silent moment after the moth­er died). He did send the frag­ment to me, and I under­stood why. It’s not real­ly the melody, but it’s the sound and singing approach. Intimate and project the sound at the same time. B‑E-A-U-T-I-F-U‑L.

In Hidden Affordance, the sec­ond com­mis­sion, I liked the instru­ments at the pre­mière, but I am also hap­py that some instru­men­tal­ists became singers dur­ing the recording. 

At the live per­for­mance in June 2024 these melodies seemed a bit ​‘too dif­fi­cult’ ​‘too new music’ but now… it sound­ed like anoth­er piece, reborn. Natural, with a good bal­ance between appear­ing and drown­ing melodies into tex­tures. I always test my melodies on piano, and the per­for­mance now had the inti­ma­cy and tex­ture I was look­ing for. I might have changed some instruc­tions in the score after the pre­mière, but in any case, nòw we met each other. 

On our way to Ent’r I was also very hap­py to hear how Saori described exact­ly the idea of play­ing with tex­ture and melody, explain­ing why she liked the piece so much and loved play­ing it (gli­i­i­i­i­isssssssssssssss). I felt under­stood. Thank you. 

Also, a mas­sive thank you to the enthu­si­ast drum­mers (THANK YOU, ANDY AND ADA, and also Nathalie for the first time in June). Andy, I don’t think I saw any­one becom­ing more one with its instru­ment than you. Impressive. Touching. 

I told Oli already how I liked the ques­tion-pas­sages in Hidden Affordance. The nat­u­ral­i­ty of it. I for­got till this moment, but I real­ize that a few years ago, I actu­al­ly searched for a long time to find good exam­ples in (con­tem­po­rary) music where speech was used in/​done in a way I could appre­ci­ate: not over affect­ed, (over) act­ed or arti­fi­cial etc. Thank you for this real­iza­tion. I liked the spaces, the dynam­ics and the nat­ur­al unpre­dictabil­i­ty in the rhythms. Fresh and ele­gant. (Did you know this ques­tions are found footage from folk songs?)

I am so curi­ous to hear the result. Of both the instru­men­tal part with voic­es and the one with instru­ments alone. 

For Affordance 3 Joseph asked me a vocaaaaaaaaal piece. At that moment I knew it would be record­ed togeth­er with Material Affordance and Hidden Affordance so I saw the third piece as some­thing com­ple­men­tary that need­ed a dif­fer­ent reg­is­ter, exter­nal ener­gy and full singing but still con­nect­ed with Material Affordance, by folk­loris­tic ele­ments. How mas­sive it sounds. Waw, I am so curi­ous what you will think when you hear the recordings. 

Then, the words in Affordance 3…. I liked a lot how honest/​serious/​personal many of you approached the own text-work. Somebody came to me to tell me she made a poem, Sam used quo­ta­tions from John Cage writ­ings and Aranza told me how emo­tion­al she is always at the begin­ning of the piece because she is men­tion­ing ani­mals and plants that are disappearing…and thanked for the affor­dance in the song to speak to the soul. 

How nice, how this became your piece now. Would love to hear all the story’s behind the texts but it might be none of my busi­ness :). B‑side?

Thanks to Oli to bring the lan­guage idea more alive in a cre­ative mor­ph­ing way. 

BUT after all this talk­ing about Material, Hidden and Affordance num­ber III, I am now believ­ing it might be a good idea to mix num­ber 1 and 3 up and make dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions of it. I will think about this in my cel the next days in the monastery of Le Corbusier. It sounds fanci­er than I would like but it feels good to think of this Architect and Beyond — Choir in this place (and just NOW I sud­den­ly under­stand the name Musarc, music +archi­tects!! Okaaaaay)

Also thank you to back­seat Sam that swal­lows 97 pro­cent of his words but keeps some to share with us, Carol (did you define your (cru­cial) func­tion?), Oli…..(you read here, you heard.…key words: #tal­ent­ed #humor #details #human #social #com­mu­nica­tive #focus # cre­ative #seri­ous #under­stand­ing #medi­um…). Your pres­ence is a lux­u­ry for a com­pos­er and made me stressless. 

I cer­tain­ly also want to thank David and Kathy, it is some time ago but beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries also!

And then there is Joseph… the founder and soul of this spe­cial constellation. 

Before last April (ter­race Fatima) we always met in stress­ful cir­cum­stances with lit­tle time and a lot of things that had to be arranged.

F.Y.I.: Concept of the mak­ing of Affordance 1,2,3:

Step 1: Joseph gave me all his trust and start­ed arrang­ing practically. 

Step 2: I actu­al­ly only had to say ​‘yes’ and start creating . 

THANK YOU FOR THAT, JOSEPH. 

Also thank you, Joseph, for being open to any ini­tia­tive like adding the vio­lin pieces and instru­ments and accept­ing my sound world as it is. And thank you to set­ting up this whole crazy idea of com­ing to Ghent and record­ing with 45 peo­ple at a very inspir­ing place + Finding a super label. Wonderful. Just like you cre­at­ed Musarc in your per­son­al way with artis­tic vision, strong pro­fes­sion­al­ism and per­son­al col­lab­o­ra­tions you made this happen.
You trust­ed me before I trust­ed myself in choir music. Thank you; it’s a won­der­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion. I learned a lot and I am cher­ish­ing it.

It was also nice the day after free-asso­ci­at­ing, think­ing out of the box, rethink­ing things LIVE at Roberta’s place. Niiiiiiiiiice. We are still in the mid­dle of it. 

Almost fin­ish­ing this let­ter, hope­ful­ly above was not too wordy: thank you, coolest choir in town (and abroad), for your Tuesday win­ter evenings. The col­lec­tive of artists, archi­tects, strong per­son­al­i­ties, long-time loy­al peo­ple, dancers, film­mak­ers, cre­ative peo­ple of all ages etc.

Sometimes I ques­tion if what I am doing in these extreme times is rel­e­vant, but these days I have got the answers. Yes, it is. OR it now (4/5/6/ April 2025), cer­tain­ly was. We did together. 

I have told a few of you but I have an extra room, so if you have to be in Belgium. Welcome to stay at my place. I have 2 cats and a daugh­ter. April is the most beau­ti­ful time when the Japanese cher­ry blossoms. 

THANK YOU

Heleen

Credits

• Commission
  Musarc Choir
• Composition
  Heleen Van Haegenborgh
• Instrumentation
  Material Affordance 1 2 3 : mxch and recorders, Hidden Affordance much, melodic instruments and persuccion, Possible Affordance much a cappella, Implicit Affordance: mxch a cappella and a potential instrument.
• Premiere
  Material Affordance: July 06, 2019 at the Whitechapel Foundry and Hidden Affordance: June 21, 2024 at Saint Paul’s Bow London Possible Affordance and Implicit Affordances: June 21, 2025