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Ernst Helmuth Flammer: String Quartet Nos. 4 & 5

17,99 

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Article number: NEOS 11618 Categories: ,
Published on: January 16, 2017

infotext:

POLYPHONY AND POLYMORPHY AS ALLEGORY OF BEING

Voyage éternel de l'oiseau de feu - The firebird's journey through time
String Quartet No. 4 (1996/97)

As an art genre, film obeys a dramaturgy of the simultaneity of different levels of action or reflection. Like him, this composition thrives on the rapid paradigm shift of different musical time levels and thus levels of consciousness. Due to this rapid switching, all levels – I call them layers – always remain latent or even present, even if sometimes in the background, barely perceptible or even completely gone. From this follows a simultaneity of different time levels, time locations and time speeds up to the "flow of time", further the simultaneity of different states of being like Zimmermann's "spherical shape of time".

Phases of silence, part-times without limits, part-times of the "then-time", of the sound flowing out of time appear broken, sound surfaces, on the other hand, are sometimes subject to an order, a numerous order of structured time sequences and through the "troublemaker" structure, coming from the background provided with a border. Composing the acceleration of perceptible time unsettles the sense of time. This opens up many levels of meaning, such as that of acceleration as a socially reified end in itself of "more and more... faster and faster..."; such as the subjectively perceived acceleration of the sense of time as we get older.

The role of the »troublemaker« (Kurt Schwitters: »Error in the System«) is always taken on by one of the musicians involved in the performance, taking turns, sometimes several musicians interfere at the same time. Today we are 'rushed through time' by the mass of stimuli invading us, in fear of a quiet uneventfulness, of flowing along in the eternal stream. Accordingly, dynamic, continuous development processes in the sense of traditional European understanding of music are largely alien to this music, apart from small ellipses. Quiet passages and carpets of sound in the background stand for the enlightened observer of time or, at times, for the vision of the absence of time.

The abundance of simultaneous layers sometimes obscures the clear form of the piece, which is based on symmetry like the arch form of our being, and its strict structure, which, however, seems to melt away in the composed silence, breaking up into infinity.

The journey through time of the firebird, that always curious being, always on the move to new shores, plunging into new things with verve, carefree, not afraid of risk, but looking for it as a challenge, means the obsession of the journey into infinity, repeatedly interrupted through the "troublemaker", but finally breaking out forever into the virtual, into the open.

Good-Byes
String Quartet No. 5 (2002)

Farewells for Anton Webern
Impressions of the farewell
Farewells in Mittersill
Farewells for Jutta Philippi-Eigen
A tribute to this wonderful woman
Farewells from Gutenzell
One of the many deaths that our soul dies
Farewells for Franz Schregle
A tribute to Anton Webern
Farewell to Jutta Philippi-Eigen
Farewell in life not only through death
However, something is severed
Farewells for the Anton Webern Quartet
Cut off from the body
Smashed, irretrievable
Farewell to Asteria Fiore
Death comes furiously
Or sometimes quietly
In any case unforeseen like here
A surprise
Farewell to Gerard Grisey
A change away from the familiar
goodbyes in the light
In memory of Jutta Philippi-Eigen
For Franz Schregle

The piece is defined by seven independent sections, completely omitted sections alternate with lively ones, each painful in its own way, each section a piece of mourning, different in the way of saying goodbye. All sections are based on a common melodic and harmonic material, which is arranged symmetrically in its structure, like the arch form of being as becoming and passing away. The mourning evokes a severe coolness, as at the beginning, but also emotion and a lively struggle, lively wrestling, not to be understood as strife, but rather as a surrender. Death sometimes comes in very different ways. Once the structure is decomposed, its density implodes into the interior as an inner contemplation.

Jutta Philippi-Eigen was a German Mother Theresa who, as a doctor, dedicated her life to the oppressed people in India (Calcutta) and Africa in sometimes dangerous missions; she was no less a wonderful musical exegete, chiefly of John Cage.
The other dedicatee, Franz Schregle, means a lot to me in his monastic life, a man of sharp intellect, as a human being of infinite goodness, as a calming pole and floating above things.

 

On the allegory of being

The fact that "polyphony" and also "polymorphism" are almost omnipresent in my composing has, in my understanding, very fundamentally to do with two aggregates of our being, its process nature, ie its constant change and transformation, and its complex (polymorphic) diversity. "Polyphonic" composing in its multiplicity is "critical" composing in its diversity of semantics derived from the musically autonomous principle. My content-aesthetic approaches are always developed from the musical morphology and vice versa congruent with it. In principle, the content is derived from this morphology, even in the case of text-bound music, which is musically immanent from the compositional handling of the text, i.e. not from the text itself. The latter is the most radical possible desideratum of a musically autonomous principle in its most consistent and at the same time most fruitful form. Polymorphism results from the polyphonic use of all musical parameters, including the direct polyphonic-contrapuntal relationship between two different parameters.

This principle is applied in both quartets, more so in the 4th quartet than in Farewells. Dense stretta-like refrains, strongly pushing forward and punctuated by a variety of stretto polyphony, the quieter parts of the formal layer "Open Rondo" (the other is a development layer!) are determined by the different speeds of progression of time, which also result from the degree of materialization of time, also designed polymorphic as a texture. The carpet of sound, often consisting of sustained tones, is in the background, at the same time allegorically describing the depth of space and the end of time in the infinite space of Eternità and the universe, sometimes more and sometimes less present, i.e. differently real or virtual in its fundamentally amorphous state of materialization. Towards the end, its spatially increasingly dominant presence, polymorphic in the seemingly infinite range of variation of its internal structure, allegorically announces the end of space and time at the same time of the declining arc of life. On the other hand, there is a large number of haptically very present polyphonic rhythmic microstructures – derived from a musical nucleus that is common to all. Their relation to the other musical parameters is always polymorphic. Similar polyphonic stretto structures can be found in the refrains, which at times collectivistically push together as a process into rhythmically homophonic, almost hermetic passages, questioning the emancipatory principle of individuality.

The 5th string quartet is also based on the principle of polyphony and polymorphism in the sense of the diversity of the individuals to be mourned. This is most visible in the forcefully advancing fourth section, in which from the fugato through the narrow passage structures are pushed together almost to unison and then separated again. This principle becomes even clearer in VI. "Furioso" section, in which grief escapes into a furious struggle against the inevitable. First performed strictly polyphonically in a wide register, also performed fugato-like in the disposition of the dynamics and that of the articulation, one voice stepping out of the collective, then deconstructed again by another, the individuals processually unite to form a collective, both morphologically and textually, in a polymorphic way, only to then move away from each other again before, in Part VII, being bids farewell to the period via a gradually retarding, strictly polyphonic pizzicato structure, excellently interpreted by the Jade Quartet.

Ernest Helmuth Flammer

program:

Voyage éternel de l'oiseau de feu - The firebird's journey through time String Quartet No. 4 (1996/97) 57:18
[01] I 02:38
[02] II 06:22
[03] III 00:45
[04] IV 07:08
[05] V 00:42
[06] VI 03:54
[07] VII 00:45
[08] VIII 02:13
[09] IX 01:11
[10] X 02:09
[11] XI 01:16
[12] XII 01:53
[13] XIII 01:56
[14] XIV 02:22
[15] XV 08:30
[16] XVI 00:17
[17] XVII 06:47
[18] XVIII 06:32

 

Good-Byes String Quartet No. 5 (2002) 17:33
[19] I 04:44
[20] II 01:59
[21] III 02:25
[22] IV 00:50
[23] V 01:25
[24] VI 02:09
[25] VII 04:01

Total playing time: 74:53

jade quartet
Hanlin Liang, violin
Hyunji You, violin
Igor Michalski, viola
Shihyu You wood, cello

World premiere recording

Press:

“Homage to Anton Webern”

Christiane Franke wrote down on January 13.1.2019, XNUMX www.classik.com:

The firebird is a magical creature that brings both blessing and disaster to its captor. That's how the fable tells it. The Freiburg composer Ernst Helmuth Flammer titles his 4th string quartet 'The Firebird's Time Travel' and uses this image as a metaphor for his journey into the incomprehensible, infinite musical cosmos. With his 5th string quartet, Flammer practices a culture of mourning after the loss of people who meant something to him, and at the same time creates a homage to Anton Webern through the amorphous structure. From his comprehensive explanation of his work, the natural scientist speaks like the philosopher Flammer, guided by the urge to understand existence beyond time and space. (…) The Jade Quartet impresses with its metronomically measurable accuracy and precision in its reproduction.

read the full review here

 

Even for a diehard fan of string quartets like me, the two works presented here form a significant challenge. The German composer Ernst Helmuth Flammer eschews the traditional concept of a string quartet, opting instead for multi-movement and multi-faceted ideal instead. (…) The disc opens with the fifty-seven-minute long Fourth String Quartet. It is divided into eighteen short sections, which can themselves be divided into movements. The music is difficult, as it forgoes traditional melodic structures for a more intense rhythmic integrity. Short, almost mathematical phrases rather than recognisable tunes, which are not everyone's cup of tea. Even so, the progression of notes and rhythms make, if the listener is open to such music, an almost mesmeric work. (…) The playing of the Jade Quartet is excellent. This is much-nuanced music. You have the feeling that they get everything that they possibly can out of it. The sound from the hybrid Super Audio CD is helpful, as every note rings true. I found the booklet essay, by Flammer himself, a little too in-depth and technical, but helpful in his descriptions of the works.

Stuart Sillitoe, June 2017

 


June 2017

Old Masters – New Masters?
New music on new CDs presented by Dirk Wieschollek

[...]
The string quartets by Ernst Helmuth Flammer, with their subtlety and intensity of expression, are rooted in the ethos of the genre in an exemplary manner.
The “Voyage eternel de l'oiseau de feu” (1996/97) embodies a profound string quartet compendium that, despite using familiar sound techniques, never bores you for a second. The expressive range of this “time journey” in 18 sound images can include forms of frenetic polyphony and expressivity or iridescent surfaces with fine motivic drawings. The Jade Quartet also plays the 5th string quartet “Farewell” (2002), a homage to Anton Webern in its crystalline structure, thrillingly precise and intense.
[...]

 


June 2017

The NEOS label continues to venture where others refuse to (or no longer) tread with its third release devoted to music by Ernst Helmuth Flammer (b1949). Active as a conductor, lecturer and organizer (notably in his native Heilbronn), he has built a notable output of works which bear testimony to studies with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough.

A questing approach to timbre and texture, allied to a complex temporal ground-plan, is evident in the Fourth String Quartet (1997). Its 57 minutes unfold over 18 sections that can be grouped into several larger 'movements', corresponding to an expanded sonata dialectic in terms of its change and return. The varying role of an antagonistic element recalls the quartet-writing of Elliott Carter; and if the Flammer lacks comparable wit or deftness, its seriousness of purpose cannot be gainsaid.

Those coming to his music for the first time should start with the Fifth String Quartet (2002) which, though it may follow a not dissimilar formal trajectory, is considerably shorter, with expressive contrasts easier to assimilate in real-time. The composer's epigraph underlines its starting point in the deaths of friends and associates, but these are not embodied in the actual content, which exhibits increasing animation before returning to its original impassiveness.

Absorbing music that Eschews easy concessions, though the Jade Quartet do all they can to project these works with vigor and insight. The SACD sound is as good as it gets in quartet terms but the composer's own annotations are hardly accommodating to novice listeners.

Richard Whitehouse

 

June 2017

focus on the essentials
New chamber music releases in the orbit of jazz, renaissance and Anton Webern

[...]
A profound chamber music modeled down to the finest sound fibers is also thanks to Ernst Helmuth Flammer, the composer who has received far too little attention. His string quartets demonstrate the possibilities of the genre in an exemplary manner in their density and expressive intensity. The “Voyage eternel de l'oiseau de feu – The Firebird's Journey through Time” (1996/97) seems almost like a compendium of expressive string quartet playing, and yet you don't miss all the familiar harmonics, tremolos, trills, bridge noises and bowing excesses for a second bored in this multi-voiced journey in 18 sound images. The range of this very polyphonic fourth string quartet is immense; it can take on forms of frenetic expressivity within the framework of discontinuous progressions or develop fine motivic contours over iridescent surfaces. The fifth string quartet “Farewell” (2002) is, in its crystalline clarity, not least a homage to Anton Webern. The Jade Quartet plays this structurally and expressively perfectly balanced music with thrilling precision and intensity.
[...]

Dirk Wieschollek

 

 

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