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THE MUSIC BY JORGE E. LÓPEZ Jorge E. López has often stated that his composing is rooted in the music of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries on the one hand and influenced by ideas of surrealism on the other. Of course, this anchoring does not mean a stylistic reference. Rather, it concerns the ethos and methodology of composing. When Mahler once said that what one makes music is only the whole, i.e. breathing, feeling, suffering human being, this also corresponds to López's idea of music: "The idea that music consists of sounds, which only exist as sounds, without association or other levels of meaning is completely foreign to me.« And elsewhere he said: »I have never identified with the term ›New Music‹. Rather, what drove me from the start was that it was about making the ancient present. I'm not looking for the new, I'm looking for what's repressed.« What consequences does such an idea of music have for composing? The musical materials that López uses are steeped in history. They often come from other works – someone else's or one's own – but have been remelted to such an extent that they hardly ever make it to the surface as quotations, but they do bring ferments of their origin into the new texture. However, this does not follow traditional rules of musical syntax, but rather a dream logic that creates mysterious constellations. Lopez's soundscape is both highly organized and undomesticated. The familiar appears in a strange form. Spaces of association are opened up everywhere, without the sound being able to be completely unraveled. Combat actions / dream actions In many games of Combat actions / dream actions the prominent use of the cor anglais and the timpani is striking. That reminds of them Scene aux champs and the Marche au supplement from Hector Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique – a work that purports to represent a dream vision produced by an intoxicant. They are part of an instrumental ensemble that - typical of Lopéz's music - is dominated by dark colors, low registers and the sound of wind instruments. The piece unfolds first of all from a diffuse, deep field of sound, which is in direct contrast to bright, glistening sounds of aggressive sharpness and percussive power: "Fear and terror, viewed half-cynically," one reads in the score - not the only one about the Commentary that points beyond the limits of the merely musical that can be found. Gradually, intertwined lines emerge from the deep background of the sound, often scale-like formations that go beyond really figurative individuation, which is only achieved with the entry of the cor anglais, which is articulated in declaiming tonal speech. Then, of course, the sound is compressed to a deep base tone, as if under the pressure of overpowering gravitation. Such an “opening and closing of the overall sound” (Christoph Becher) occurs several times in the course of the composition, which follows a retrograde formal principle: the pitches of the first section then sound again, albeit in reverse order, with a completely new rhythm, not literally throughout and repeatedly interrupted by free slots. Comparable concepts can be found, for example, in Alban Berg. Of course, its retrograde constructions (e.g. in chamber concert or in the ostinato Lulu) not only recognizable in the sheet music, but also to be understood by listening. With López, of course, the materials are treated in the same way as geological formations may behave when mountains are built: they are subjected to a comprehensive metamorphosis, overlaid and furrowed by fractures. A second solo instrument is also established with the isolated bass trumpet. In such procedures, Christoph Becher recognizes “techniques of dreaming: the subject is crumbled and rebuilt, but remains the center, inescapable. Familiar figures scurry dimly through an unfamiliar environment, hardly recognizable [...]. The techniques of combat are exposed in individual musical gestures whose vehemence is reminiscent of forms of punishment. […] López's music describes actions that bear witness to the struggle with one's own ego, which may rage at night in dreams.« Second Chamber Symphony Op. 23 »A végső Tavasz« The title A végső Tavasz and some passages of text from the beginning of the last sentence paraphrase lines from the poem Várás a Tavasz-kunyhóban by Endre Ady (1877-1919), who is considered the innovator of Hungarian literature and whose poetry is based on Baudelaire and Verlaine. The title cannot be translated into German without a hitch: One Last Spring probably hits the intention best, but does not quite correspond to the original grammatical structure. Hungary is then also present in the sounds: for example in the form of seemingly alienated children's songs that suspend the descent into hell of the main parts in the central passages of the second movement and unexpectedly in the Magyar accents from Kodálys Hary Janos expired. In the finale, Liszt's sounds for a moment mazeppa and the fourth movement refers from beginning to end to Mahler's Scherzo First Symphony. Mahler once titled the movement »With full sails« and experienced a disastrous shipwreck at the Budapest premiere of the symphony. Then the words are Hungarian, which – sung, whispered, spoken – join the sounds and add traces of lived life. Even the details of the place and time of completion of the individual movements in the manuscript of the score are Magyarized: Vienna appears in Hungarian as Bécs. Why this dedicated reference to Hungary? One is probably right in assuming that – in addition to the composer's affinity for Hungarian culture – one assumes unwritten stories of an autobiographical nature as a kind of subtext, which – although never clearly verifiable for the listener – fueled inspiration and imagination. The reference to Hungary is one of several levels that are brought together in this work and result in enigmatic constellations like in a labyrinthine dream that could have sprung from Luis Buñuel's imagination. A végső Tavasz is an epic chamber symphony, a novel of sounds composed of five chapters. A quasi-orchestral sonority is elicited from the ensemble, which is not exactly large. The dimensions are spacious. In the center of the work is a largo. This movement is flanked by scherzi. The first and last movements act like a preparatory prelude and a summarizing epilogue. The first movement opens with a brief prologue that establishes two gestures as a pair of opposites: a battered major chord in a rough sound pressed into the lower register, then a fragile, almost stifled single note. Then space is given to expansive solo cadenzas of piano and horn. They appear as if someone's tongue is loosening, a murmuring tonal speech, preluding something to come. In sharp contrast to this, passages unfold that seem to have been overheard from the rhythmic chanting of praying people, the language-like style is a little droning, the sonority is arid and disembodied. This establishes a dualistic constellation akin to that of the sonata, and indeed one could make out the contours of a sonata movement in this movement. In the central parts, which correspond to the development, the movement picks up speed. The arabesque-like melody of the cadences is fanned out in many voices, the pulsating rhythm of the chanting tends towards a march. The movement culminates in a large horn cadenza that introduces a kind of recapitulation that sharpens the contrast of the opening. The second movement seems like a waltz imagined in a fever dream. Its periodicity and triple meter remain perceptible over long stretches. Familiar melodic gestures shine through, but their figures are twisted, distorted, emerging like debris in a maelstrom. This music is under constant pressure. It has a physical presence that grips the listener. One gets the impression that the corpus of sounds is about to burst at any moment. Instead, in the center of the movement - as if you were in the eye of a hurricane - the above-mentioned seemingly unreal episode in which children's songs - they come from the collection Csigabiga Palota (Palace of the nice snail) – collaged in microtonally alienated harmony. Then, when the storm breaks out again, debris from that episode flashes from the whirl of the fever dream waltz. The immediately following third movement, initiated by the chime of the bell, gives time to spacious structures after the intensity and density of the previous one. In a way, he listens inward. It is structured by violently erupting percussive attacks, like bursts of energy that open up echo chambers. The past is remembered vaguely, such as the chanting passages from the first movement. Fragments from music history are kicked up like dust by the attacks of the drums: a few bars from Beethoven's first movement Seventh Symphony and a fragment from Wagner's Valkyrie Ride. Just as the past can gain a second life in a dream, Mahler's scherzo awakens with the transition to the fourth movement First Symphony to insane ghostly existence. From beginning to end, this sentence remains omnipresent. Admittedly, its elements lead a life of their own, they proliferate, mutate, swirl around, grimace as if the sentence were being hallucinated. Nothing feels safe anymore, especially not when the singing voice is added. Of course, she does not act as a solo, but is amalgamated with the instruments. It almost seems as if the hitherto almost entirely instrumental sounds begin to speak as if in a dream. Everyday, physical, sexual pushes to the surface. The secret writing of a subtext beneath the music becomes legible. This music seems like a picture puzzle. Such ambivalence, created by the more or less clear recourse to music-historical models, is continued in the finale. Roughly speaking, this sentence consists of two large complexes. The first is characterized over long stretches by a rhythmic ostinato that dem Mars-Sentence from Gustav Holst's The planets is borrowed. The ostinato is occasionally counterpointed by fragments from the movement from Holst's tone poem dedicated to Venus. In an intermittent passage, on the other hand, a fragment from the second movement of the String Quartet op. 132 picked up by Beethoven. When the energy of the ostinato flags, reminiscences of the first three movements take hold and the gaze wanders back to the music, as it were, reminiscent. Jens Schubbe WHO ARE WE? I have spent the last two years mainly studying the unpublished manuscripts of the Transylvanian mathematician János Bolyai. Most of them are not mathematical at all. After he died in 1830 at the age of 28 Appendix in which he laid out the foundations of non-Euclidean geometry, he spent the remaining 30 years of his life working on a system of world doctrine. He wanted to describe the workings of the human world through mathematical equations. If I A végső Tavasz (One Last Spring) for the first time, I was engrossed in the Bolyai notes: fragmentary sections, unfinished sentences, ink-blotted papers, deletions and insertions. I was beginning to doubt that I would learn anything from it. I felt like I was witnessing the endless failure of a mad genius. Fortunately, at exactly this point in time, a mutual friend sent me the recording of the Zurich premiere of A végső Tavasz. At the time, I was staying in a Swiss monastery as part of an author residency. The wing of the building was empty; I went downstairs to the library, put the CD in the player and listened to it at full volume. I first heard López's music more than ten years ago. It was in April 2003 in the Konzerthaus Berlin. one played Breath Hammer Lightning, a piece for large orchestra. I watched spellbound as percussionists and brass streamed in from the outside corridors and upper tiers and crowded the strings, enclosing some of them in a tight circle; this in turn led to the remaining violinists giving up everything and suddenly revealing their resilience. Freed from the desperate spasms of her will to live, her music erupted and beauty proclaimed herself to all eternity. It was a cathartic experience. I went through something similar in 1989, when the Romanian revolution was victorious and people flocked to the streets and hugged each other. If I A végső Tavasz in the library, I suddenly understood what Bolyai had created. In A végső Tavasz one hears Hungarian words, but their use retains the unfamiliarity inherent in the word. Philosophy would put it this way: In the denomination, in what is hidden in the name itself, appears the designation of what really exists. Then I realized that the notes left by Bolyai, which fill several boxes, reveal the workings of the human world not through factual affirmations but through their structure. You have to go insane at the huge task, but then, in a final act of desperation, you overcome something; one does not fall into the abyss, and this crossing proves that one can find the answer. Long before Einstein and others, Bolyai was the first to formulate the insight that the properties of space are influenced by the objects that are in space: by their mass, their speed, their interactions with each other. Objects do not fill space, they create it. The sounds in López are not the inhabitants of space, but its creators. They create a non-Euclidean musical space. let us A végső Tavasz hear again and again. Or Scenes. We hear so much uplift, so many irrepressible tunes, interrupted melodic experiments and scraps of familiar musical motifs, as if the musicians were playing from tattered, frayed fragments of notes blown about by the wind. At one point we hear a barking dog. I can't even imagine how that sound is produced; I would like to see how the musician does it. How does it work? Yes, this also binds the music so strongly to the human. The near and the distant are juxtaposed in this non-Euclidean musical space made up of past and present: rural barks next to the birth of the Andromeda galaxy, a picnic by the ocean next to a Viennese promenade, a landslide in Switzerland next to great-great-grandchildren born in the Year 2042 play "Heaven and Hell". The world is more than we think and we are more. We should rethink everything, and I mean it: freedom, aesthetics, our goals, our desires, love, friendship, history, Europe, America, all continents, all oceans. What are we afraid of? Let's hear this music and think about it all again. Zsolt Láng program: Jorge E. Lopez (* 1955) [01] Combat Actions/Dream Actions Op. 11 for ensemble (1995/1998) 22:44 II. Chamber Symphony Op. 23 “A végső Tavasz” . 51:54 [02] 1. Poco Andante 05:42 Total playing time: 74:43 Leslie Leon Soprano [02–06] Collegium Novum Zurich Jonathan Stockhammer Dirigent first recordings
Press:
El yo fertilizado por la history […] Ambas partituras conocen, a mayores y para realzar sus muchas virtudes, lecturas simplemente excelsas en versions de un Collegium Novum Zürich de una riqueza tímbrica y una precisión técnica portentosas, con Jonathan Stockhammer al frente, locual es un seguro para abordar repertorios tan exigentes como estos, de un virtuosismo por momentos desquiciante. Afortunadamente, las tomas de sonido acompañan, siendo riquísimas en detalles, presencia, espacialización y generosos rangos dinámicos, algo fundamental en ambas piezas (destacadamente, en el opus 11). Además, nos encontramos con la típica edición del sello NEOS, con un libreto en el que destacan los ensayos a cargo de Jens Schubbe y Láng Zsolt: cruciales para adentrarnos en los vericuetos de dos propuestas que merecen una audición atenta y el dejarnos abrumar por sus Muchos paisajes sonoros, prestando una especial atención a cómo el yo escucha y se deja fertilizar por la historia. Paco Yanez
Torsten Möller wrote in issue 12/2019: (...) The Collegium Novum Zurich, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer, plays very accurately, with great attention to detail, and at the same time powerfully in appropriate places. In the chamber symphony, Leslie Leon sings the lines by the Hungarian poet Endre Ady expressively, but also manages to switch to an ironically distanced tone. A furious recording quality of the Swiss radio station SRF and an informative, easy-to-read booklet text by Jens Schubbe complete the outstanding impression.
In the Neue Magazin für Musik, Torsten Möller noted: “Especially because of its repertoire value, this CD should not be missing from any closet of those who are enthusiastic about new music.” (Issue # 6_2019) |
