Folke Rabe

Who is Folke Rabe?

Folke Rabe is a Swedish composer. Works include the electronic drone pieces What??, Basta for solo trombone, Escalations for brass quintet, Concerto for trombone: "All the Lonely People" featuring quotes from The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", and With Love No. 1 and 2 for piano.

According to Robert Erickson What?? contains "no obvious discrete changes" and "no sharply defined sections". The piece uses several drone pitches, though they are presented at a time scale where pitch change is "hardly noticed." Interference beats are highlighted and, as "an elegant touch," the microtonal pitches that produce those beats "are worked into a larger pattern of pitch relations". "All possible timbral dimensions are manipulated: spectral envelope, including harmonic and inharmonic partials; time envelope phenomena, such as beats and tremolo; micropitch changes, both fast and slow. Transformations between pitch → chord, chord → 'a sound', 'a sound' → pitch abound."