infotext:
POLYPHONY AND POLYMORPHY AS ALLEGORY OF BEING Voyage éternel de l'oiseau de feu - The firebird's journey through time 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 Farewells for Anton Webern 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.
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:
Press:
|
