The limitation can also be a liberation

Stephen Emmer, composer of hundreds of famous TV theme tunes, fell victim to tinnitus and hearing loss. The album ‘Mount Mundane’ is his musical mountain of purification. “My despair tapped into new sources of inspiration.

Media Composer

You don't have to know his name to have heard him. Composer Stephen Emmer (66) wrote hundreds of catchy tunes for popular television programs such as RTL Nieuws and the NOS Journaal (of which his father Fred Emmer was the face for many years). For him, his new album Mount Mundane means coming home after an odyssey of more than ten years, during which tinnitus, deafness, and sudden dizziness drove Emmer toward hermitage.

Mt. Mundane

But in that frightening silence, he found his own voice: “My existence as a composer over the past five decades feels, in retrospect, like an etude, an exercise, for Mount Mundane.” The album contains mainly meditative pieces that seem to contemplate life. At the same time, the piano, choir, and orchestra paint a landscape in which Emmer gives free rein to his admiration for French Impressionism.

Global Music Award

Last week, he received confirmation that he is on the right track. In the United States, Mount Mundane won a Global Music Award, a prize for independent musicians who are not signed to major international record labels. "The award means a lot," he says, "because the music reflects my personal history. Apparently, those feelings are recognisable to others."

In retrospect, Emmer believes that the seed of his hearing loss—and with it, the path Mount Mundane expresses—was sown in the mid-eighties. For a concert with the English pop group The Lotus Eaters, he was lent the sound system of the heavy metal band Motörhead. "It wasn't designed for keyboards. I couldn't hear anything during the soundcheck. Two guys turned some knobs and grinned. 'Try again, mate.'" With the first key I struck, my left ear took a massive blow. Twenty years later—during a hearing test with increasingly loud beeps—this dormant trauma awakened. Since then, a constant ringing has sounded in my ear.

Macrame

The search for a cure led Emmer to, among others, the ENT doctor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra at the time. "He said I just had to try to become friends with it. Tinnitus was a kind of annoying uncle. That intrusive tone was driving me crazy. What do you do about such a phantom sound in your head? At one point, I was macrame-ing at a cognitive therapy course. With a taxi driver, a former jeweller, and an accountant, we were discussing pastel shades. An alienating experience." And then one of those fellow sufferers committed suicide. "We stood with the survivors next to his coffin. When I shared that experience at home with my then-wife and my two daughters, they started crying. And suddenly it dawned on me that they were taking that tragedy personally. ‘Are you going to do that too?’ I swore to them that I would never take my own life."

By then, Emmer doubted whether he could still compose. “The psychologist didn’t think quitting was a good idea. ‘Music,’ he said, ‘is not only your work, but equally your passion. Perhaps you should think in terms of semi-finished products.’ I had no clue what he meant, and neither did he really. On the way back, something occurred to me. Composing is plucking notes out of the air, and that presupposes inspiration. That becomes difficult with a B-flat, such an absolute tone, in your ear. Arranging existing pieces, on the other hand, that was possible. Until the moment I realised I preferred writing myself again.”

By that time, Emmer’s condition had entered a different phase. Within a few years, his hearing in the left ear died off, leaving only a buzzing sound on that side of his head. He entered the world of asymmetrical hearing. “I could no longer manage to listen to stereo. Here at home, I switched to mono and special speakers. That isn’t possible elsewhere. In a café, music becomes unbearable after ten minutes.” Moreover, Emmer suffered unpredictable attacks of dizziness. "I no longer dared to go out on the street, because fear and panic lurked around every corner. So I sat at home as a patient."

Another search for doctors followed. After a waiting period of two and a half years, he was able to get an appointment this spring at the dizziness expertise center in Apeldoorn. "They determined that along with my hearing, the balance organ on the left side had also failed, but that my brain was already working to compensate for it. I was told that the dizziness was likely temporary. That conclusion seems to be correct so far."

Fate

Meanwhile, Emmer started composing again. He watched and listened to his old music, which seemed like finger exercises to him, "But in that naivety, I did find a melodic originality. And with the full artisanal toolbox of today, I entered into a duet with my younger self on Mt Mundane." The album title represents an imaginary mountain of purgatory that Emmer had to climb to leave the limitations of his medical condition behind. He had to choose melody over rhythm and warm instrumentation. "In a classical sense, it meant slow-flowing adagios. I didn't mind that, because in my view, that is where composers express themselves most personally."

The names of the pieces also contain hints at Emmer's development, as well as at admired composers and literature. For instance, ‘Belvedere’s Exotic Garden’ is about the Japanese backyard of the French composer Maurice Ravel, a master of musical color. ‘In Search for Meaning’ refers to the book of the same name by psychologist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, who argued that fate can strike man, but that he can choose not to wallow in victimhood. "Cornered," says Emmer, "I found inspiration in an in-between world that I could not have found anywhere else." The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stated that limitation can be a liberation. And I have experienced that. My despair tapped into new sources. Only now do I feel that my musical identity coincides with my personality.

[NRC - Joost Galema]

Listen to Mt Mundane on your favourite music platform here

Buy the Mt Mundane album on CD here