www.fbbva.es www.neos‐music.com
COLLECTION BBVA FOUNDATION ‐ NEOS Donaueschinger Musiktage 2007 Vol. 2 Hans Thomalla . James Saunders Arnulf Herrmann . François Sarhan CD CONTENT: HANS THOMALLA: AUSRUFF for large ensemble (2007) “Exclamatio. When one utters an exclamation as a result of a being strongly moved.” Johann Christoph Gottsched The sounds of a composition are signs. They carry meaning, even when this meaning can only rarely be translated into language. Their signification points in two directions. In one way, sounds are signs made by mankind for mankind, by composers and interpreters for the listeners. In another way, sounds exist as their own sound material, and are signs of the very material that sounds. The signs relate respectively to their entirely specific and individual nature. Take for example the characteristic sound decay of the harp, resulting from gut strings and a wooden body, or the specific sound spectrum of a clarinet, arising out of the type of material used and the shape of the mouthpiece and body of the instrument, or even the sound attack brought about when the strings of piano are struck, a consequence of the felt hammers and the weight and tension of the strings. Both aspects of this significance are intimately connected with each other. The composer or the instrumentalist draws on the sound characteristics of material to achieve a certain rhetoric: the brass wind sforzato with its extreme loudness and forceful attack acts as a denotation of violence; the harp strings brushed just faintly in pianissimo and the onset of their vibration are a denotation of tenderness and gentleness. The music of my times is determined by a marked tendency to sell off what I shall call the clichés of signification, of rhetorical stereotypes – in the field of New Music just as much as in popular music. They are called up just as effortlessly by the composer as they are consumed by the listener. There emerges an alluring reaction, a kind of reflex as it were. Ponder if you will on the timpani and the trumpets, knowing chords of glassy harmonics, the exotic jet whistles, the pseudo‐heartbeats conjured up by a damped bass drum and some low strings on the piano, or on the exclamatory fanfares of the clarinets at the zenith of their range. Personally speaking, meaningful composition requires much more than merely calling up these rhetorical clichés as if one were working with a sampler. Composing remains for me an exercise in non‐verbal rhetoric; it is a kind of rhetoric whose language must continually be created anew from the relationships cast up by the characteristics of sounds, and within which cultural experience plays a role. All in all, new relationships must be formed. Of crucial importance is the active questioning – at the very foundations of musical language itself – of the sounds and sonic figures with special regard to what actually sounds and what this actually might denote. It is the questioning just as much of the acoustic characteristics of sonic figures as of their sedimentary history, a past which over centuries has assumed specific denotational values within the context of music governed by rhetoric. Here, questioning does not mean any reconstruction of meaning 1
destined for a museum, but a radical artistic reformulation of that which is denotative. This must be supported by a sober dissection and encompass a confrontation of the figures with material from another context. Important too is that similar support is provided by passive listening as well as a vehement disassembling of the figures into their individual parts, to include the destruction of rhetorical characteristics associated with them. Music is always an art of the present; its signs always erase other signs. Ausruff for large ensemble represents a questioning of “exclamatio”, the musical figure of the great outcry uttered as part of the compositional language of the present within which I exist, especially with regard to works for ensemble. It is the simultaneous attempt to articulate an exclamation itself. Ausruff is dedicated to Ensemble Modern. James Saunders Translation: Graham Lack JAMES SAUNDERS: #211007 for ensemble (2006/2007) #211007 is a version of my ongoing modular composition #[unassigned]. The piece is flexible in its construction, with each version being formed by a combination of newly composed and pre‐
existing modules. New versions are composed for a specific performance and normally only performed once: differences depend on instrumentation, duration, and the particular deployment of material. Each version is therefore a bespoke composition for the performers, and it allows me to embrace unusual and interesting situations as I work (for example, using non‐standard or rare instruments, different performance spaces, or variable levels of performer ability). The generic title for the whole project is #[unassigned], however individual versions of the piece use the date in the form #ddmmyy to derive the specific title. The title is therefore unique to the individual performance. There is no definitive score or version of the piece as all display different possibilities within the boundaries of the project. I am essentially writing one piece which is always different. The whole #[unassigned] project aims to explore how a change of context or synchronisation affects the way we perceive events. I am interested in the listener gaining an alternative perspective of a piece at different hearings, with each reinforcing a global perception of the piece, and one that is subject to (at times radical) change. Most of the individual modules have been developed through a process of experimentation with instruments and working with performers. They share a number of characteristics and define the soundworld of #[unassigned]: extremes of dynamic, normally approaching silence; extremely slow or small ranges of movement (e.g. bow speed, air flow, finger speed); extreme registers; uncontrollable physical movements (e.g. very rapid single finger tremolos); unpredictable responses from instruments, sometimes through alteration or preparation (e.g. coffee stirrer between the strings on a violin); and very long or short durations of sounds. These characteristics provide many ways of finding points of contact between sounds as described. For example, adopting similar ranges of movement with the slow drawing of a cello bow and the gradual scraping of a credit card along a bass piano string both result in a series of uneven clicks. This allows textures to be developed, altered gradually, or contrasted with different types of material when building a version. This version is for fourteen players, augmented by a range of lo‐fi electronic devices and objects including dictaphones, radios, CDs, feedback systems, and bic biro lids. James Saunders 2
ARNULF HERRMANN: MONSTRÖSES LIED for solo clarinet, small ensemble and electronics (2007) In a compositional sense, Monströses Lied (Monstrous Song) is the chronology of an excrescence. At the beginning there is a song…cast in clear tripartite form. The way in which various parts are formed – a kind of exterior skin is produced if one will – is an element that remains constant for the whole of the piece. But directly underneath the surface of the skin a sense of animation reigns: the very first part for example warps perceptibly on its reappearance. As the piece proceeds, the structure built from smaller links of the chain – already contained within the work itself – is subjected to a pro‐cess of rank growth, this proliferation extending towards the outside. It is the image of a tablet that, once tossed into a liquid, immediately multiplies in volume and finally foams up before it spills over the edge, disaggregating at the same time. The potential stasis of clearly contoured parts is undermined during this continuous process of imposed deformation. Such variation and duplication of the elements jounces the balance to which the form tends. This in turn leads to the form being assailed as it were, producing an antagonism of dynamisation and balance, which ultimately ends in an almost manic periodicity. In contradistinction the voice of the solo instrument emerges gradually out of the ensemble – to mention just one other important aspect of the song. The line is absorbed until the separation of the solo instrument from the ensemble is but a spatial one. Thus all is possible, from a melting of lines to parallel courses. An example would be the solo cadenza, or at least that which remains of it. Arnulf Herrmann Translation: Graham Lack FRANÇOIS SARHAN: THE NAME OF THE SONG [DEAR ME (BOBOK)] [Von der Wiige bis zum G. (Bobok)] for string trio, piano and Fender Rhodes, percussion, narrator and live electronics (2007) The Name of the Song and Talks Time Nothing are parts of a larger project, called Von der Wiige bis zum G., which also includes Testimony, a concert piece for Ensemble Modern, and l’Nfer (un point de détail), written for the Ictus ensemble. The central idea of the cycle is to link within a narrative context samples of voices or texts dealing with life experience. While Testimony deals with short stories taken from day to day life in the USA, l’Nfer concerns itself with a trip I made to London, one used as a basis for other observations I made of TV reality shows and religious fundamentalists for example. In The Name of the Song, there are two text elements: the first comprises hundreds of thousands of samples I collected (I have been doing this for some years now) of recorded voices perorating exclusively on the concept of time. These samples are taken from radio, television, films, interviews, in fact any sources which contain the words “before”, “after”, or “never”. These samples are connected in a vast “kyrielle” (chain) that is governed by various rules, speeds and progressions, according to the context. The basic idea is to filter the language – these conversations – with a kind of special sieve, in order to arrive at what I shall call just the “time arrows”, those tiny directional words that allow us to recall or prognosticate, and which serve to place us in the flow of time, something inexorable and irrefutable by its very nature. The snippets, as it were, are presented here in a special manner as part of an installation entitled Talks Time Nothing. But back to everyday life: standing at a bar, let us imagine that we eavesdrop on the conversations of a number of people (some invisible customers), but can only make out these temporal terms. This 3
hypothesis remains in my opinion quite plausible; it is just that in real life the temporal terms are cluttered by the other words. The reason why there are two different artistic consequences – the installation and the musical work itself – is simply that the tradition of a concert piece seems very difficult to rejuvinate or revitalise. To incorporate in music a different use of time (as in an installation that has neither a beginning nor an end), and to integrate the space itself and the memory of a place, is something that is full of potential, it is “une promesse de nouveaux délices”. The Name of the Song remains the concert part: it acts as the libretto. No “time arrows”, as discussed above, are given. Let me now describe the sources of the text. Ran und ein kleines Mädchen kommt zu meine Ma zu meine Schwester dran. Da kommt noch ein großer Bruder und mein Mädchen ist meinem Bruder und meine Blätterchen sind so schöne und weiß und tot. Davon hab ich das mein Fenster auf und da hab ich das gar nicht mehr auf, und jetzt: ist es zu und ist es zu. Und meine Füßchen sind schlecht und weiß und meine Äpfel sind so schön und die sind alle alt und alt, alt und alt, alt und alt, alt und alt, alt und alt, alt el alt, alte Heizung alte Küche alte Wohnung. Da schmeißen wa alles weg. ƒ
Okay, so what is the title of the song? ƒ
The title of this song is called “…” ƒ
That is the name of the piece? ƒ
No, no, that is the name of the title. But the title of the piece is Bobok. ƒ
So Bobok is the title of this piece. No, you don’t understand, Bobok is only how the piece is called. The real name of the piece is “Dear Me”. And that’s only the name of the song. It’s not the song itself. What IS the song, then? ƒ
– The song is “The Name of the Song”. ƒ
– Is it long? It’s very long, but it is very beautiful. Everybody that hears it – either it brings tears into their eyes, or else – Or else it doesn’t, you know. And the tune is my own invention. Your face is the same that everybody has – the two eyes, nose in the middle, mouth underneath. It’s always the same. Now, if you had the eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help. ƒ
– It wouldn’t look nice. ƒ
– Just wait till you’ve tried. The first part is an improvised song by a little girl from Berlin in 2003; she is called Gerda Krenzlin. She was just two‐and‐a‐half at the time. Her freedom of spirit and the way she connects ideas afresh was perfection itself. The following two sections of dialogue were extracted – and subsequently transformed from – Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. But how do you connect these time samples, this young girl singing in German and Lewis Carroll? I assumed that the song and the dialogue were part of the same scene, the dialogue occurring after the song. It represents an attempt to understand it better so to speak. As for the song, I think the fact it was sung by a little girl fits Lewis Carroll perfectly well. Finally, any temporal elements remain the seeds for this scene. This is because I used many transformative devices to render the original song and her voice in a new way and thus create material for an entire piece. By going to and fro between a young voice and mature voices, and by using musical development as a metaphor for 4
ageing, the transformations enable us to feel time and the passing of time. In Carroll’s original text, one of the songs is called “The aged aged man”. I dreamt of a song sung by the same person at different ages, the transmogrification of the voice being the only variation. A small gesture, but oh how expressive, and sufficient, and tragic it is! ƒ
– It wouldn’t look nice. ƒ
– Just wait till you’ve tried. François Sarhan 5