René Wohlhauser: In pure being

BE LOUD
Works for various ensemble combinations by René Wohlhauser

Thrown acrobats

version for soprano, baritone, flute, clarinet, violin and cello (2018),
to a poem by the composer Ergon 68, No. 2, musical work number 1855

Composition commissioned by the Basel-Stadt and Baselland Music Committee

The recording is a studio production with the »Ensemble Polysono«, which premiered this piece on a European tour in 2019: Christine Simolka, soprano René Wohlhauser, baritone Tatiana Timonina, flute Andriy Bandurin, clarinet Maria Ten, violin Vladislav Smirnov, cello

The harshness, gruffness and black humor of gallows songs are inherent in this piece, which was written to a poem by the composer.

Sharply cut edges, harsh contrasts, bold inserts, rugged, rough cliffs, sudden incursions, edges and fractures, a blocky dynamic. The superficially raw appearance of this music, which, on closer inspection, proves to be very differentiated and multifaceted, is a reflection of today's time, a parody of the zeitgeist and insofar a criticism of it. But this music is also a response to the widespread fashion within contemporary art music, in which the hesitant, undecided, dying, meaningless pregnant and the escape into the noisy non-binding prevail. The accessible style of the music corresponds to the snotiness and defiance of the vocal text.

The thrown, cheeky rhythm, gestures and harmony are a thrown answer to the conditions in this world on which we balance like acrobats thrown into being. When the politicians get cheeky, then the artists have to do it even more and not wallow in a self-satisfied corner of the self-replicating apocalyptic mood.

Quartet for flute, clarinet, violin and cello No. 1 (2018)
Ergon 67, music work number 1849

The recording is a studio production with members of the »Ensemble Polysono«, who premiered the piece on a European tour in 2019: Tatiana Timonina, flute · Andriy Bandurin, clarinet · Maria Ten, violin · Vladislav Smirnov, cello

This is an aggressive, gripping music that doesn't accept the precarious conditions in the world, but turns against it with anger. Hard, rugged blocks of sound are contrasted by intimate passages. Anger against injustice, love as a perspective. Block-like, abrupt things become more and more fragmented, rhythmically diversified and intensified and finally fall into noise.

The dialogic, gestural, the communication between different instruments and groups of instruments is typical for my music. Likewise, the clash of contrary forms of expression, so that something new can emerge from the energy of the clash. Outrageous and intimate stand side by side and seek a common level of communication in order to find strong musical emotionality. It's about the musical search for individuality and authenticity, the design of hybrid sound objects and the contextualisation of divergent moments of expression into emotionally touching music.

In pure being
version for soprano, baritone, flute, clarinet and cello (2017),
to a poem by the composer Ergon 64, No. 2, musical work number 1816

Klaus Huber in memory
Composition commissioned by the UBS Kulturstiftung

The recording is a studio production with the »Ensemble Polysono«, which premiered this piece on a European tour in 2018: Christine Simolka, soprano René Wohlhauser, baritone Tatiana Timonina, flute Andriy Bandurin, clarinet Vladislav Smirnov, cello

The work shows an almost classical structure with introduction, stanzas and interludes following the formal direction of the composer's poem. At first, only the vocals were composed in a version for soprano and baritone, as a confrontation with the tradition of classical counterpoint, reflected on the musical experience of the 21st century, in classical dramaturgy of the form system with tension building, culmination and sinking into delirious circling around changing tonal centers. Even the formation of the melody itself could be described as "classical" in its urgent, leading-tone manner.

By adding the instruments, these classic lines were placed in a different context, broken up, questioned and countered. And again in another direction, which relativizes and questions everything that came before, the concluding coda tilts, so to speak as a turning point - or perhaps one should say: the opening coda.

The poem embodies an independent creation and unfolds in suggestive images a conflict-ridden dialectic and a rollercoaster of emotions that lead to an inner dramatic tension, which finds direct expression in the music in the stirring, delirious confusion.

Trio for flute, clarinet and cello No. 2 (2017)
Ergon 63, music work number 1809

The recording is a studio production with members of the »Ensemble Polysono«, who premiered the piece on a European tour in 2018: Tatiana Timonina, flute · Andriy Bandurin, clarinet · Vladislav Smirnov, cello

In this work, the three instruments were treated as a single, so to speak »multitimbral and polystructural super instrument«. It begins with a monophonic melody that wanders through the various instruments or just like a single instrument that runs a melodic progression through different timbres or is able to express itself in different sounding colors because it can change its timbre like a chameleon that ever changes his skin color depending on the situation (bars 1-4). Then the monophony thickens, with this monophonic instrument broadening somewhat and expanding into rhythmically irregularly repeated three-part chord structures like a dancing hydra, which as an individual being could probably sing in polyphony (bars 5ff). The next phase consists in the fact that this multi-instrument also breaks up its repetitive parallelism, so to speak, fans out its moving one-part nature and converts it into multi-part nature, in that unison movements gradually split into side movements (bars 11-13) into independently led voices and arrive at counter-movements (bars 18ff), just as the parallel Notre-Dame organa developed into polyphony via lateral movements. Then we experience the glitter of the spread imaginary instrument, in which a chord structure limited to a few tones whirls and flashes its tones in a virtuoso manner through wide leaps into different octave registers (bars 20-23). This sets a basic arrangement that develops as the piece progresses and mutates into various forms and variants. Even where the three instruments play counterpoint, they are like a self-contained body of sound, i.e. like a single instrument that only plays with and explores its internal structural and combination possibilities.

Gradual Cellissimo for cello solo (2017)
Ergon 60, music work number 1790
Composition commissioned by Markus Stolz

The recording is a studio production with Markus Stolz, cello, who premiered the piece and to whom it is dedicated on the occasion of the cello's 50th anniversary.

On the one hand, this piece is a virtuoso concert piece. Out of sheer joy of playing and driven by rhythmic impulsiveness, it scales the highest technical demands and at the end of the piece also literally the highest heights.

On the other hand, it is a book of hours, so to speak, that invites you to meditate. This is indicated by the »gradual« in the title. Music should never be limited to technical feats and sleight of hand, but should always contain enough musical substance and spiritual richness to allow deepening and edification, to give comfort and strength.

In terms of composition, the piece represents a compendium of processing techniques that are easy to understand. The entire piece is developed from practically nothing, namely just a tone repetition, in which the elements are continually spun out and the motifs are constantly being reshaped into new shapes. One should flow naturally into the next. Even where contrasting material is introduced in a dialectical sense in order to initiate a musical dialogue, as in the high and soft col legno passage at the beginning, the structural references to the main material are clearly audible and visible. The whole piece thus refers to the source material, which is always revealed in different, new and sometimes unexpected facets.

Mikosch...lost in the Ultra Deep Field for piano solo (2013)
Ergon 46, music work number 1646
Composition commissioned by Ortwin Stürmer

The recording is a studio production with Elia Seiffert, piano, who also performed the piece live.

The  Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) is an image of a small region of the sky acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope over the period September 3, 2003 to January 16, 2004. It was the deepest image in the Universe until the release of the Hubble Extreme Deep Field in September 2012, ever recorded in the visible light range. A region of the sky was selected that contains hardly any disturbing bright stars in the foreground. A target area in the constellation was chosen Chemical Furnace southwest of Orion. The diameter of the selected part of the sky corresponds to about one tenth of the diameter of the moon as seen from Earth. This corresponds to an area of ​​one square millimeter at a distance of one meter and represents approximately one forty-millionth of the entire visible sky. The HUDF contains around 10.000 galaxies and large cosmic objects. It consists of two separate images by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). The image was created from 800 individual exposures that were taken during Hubble's 400 orbits. It would take the Hubble Space Telescope a million years to observe the entire sky at this resolution. (Wikipedia, March 19, 2013)

The music attempts to trace the relationship between human consciousness and the universe. She tries to take a very deep look into the universe with its matter and energy organized according to physical laws. Are we in the eye of the universe? Are we lost in space? And what is beyond the universe? This question has been on people's minds for quite some time, like the well-known wood engraving the atmosphere by Camille Flammarion from 1888.

clump song for soprano, baritone and piano (2018), based on a poem by the composer
Ergon 66, music work number 1843

The recording is a studio production with the »Duo Simolka-Wohlhauser«, which premiered this piece on a European tour in 2018: Christine Simolka, soprano René Wohlhauser, baritone and piano

Pausing, cutting out so that what lies beneath comes to light, the pause in tension, different degrees of density and tension, trying out new constellations, the contextualization of things that are out of context. These are some of the techniques and procedures used in this piece to create a peculiar sonic universe. However, all of these processes are held together and overlaid by a physicality that can be experienced directly, which speaks directly to and touches the listener.

The "lumpy" is understood here compositionally as interesting musical aggregate states that, like physical aggregate states, can transform into one another through changes in context or mutate into something new. The poem also arose from this in a kind of corresponding lumpy semantics.

The quiet, introverted, listening to the quiet. But with consistency and radicalism. And as a contrast, the originally clumpy, unpolished, original, immediate. These are different sides of the music that are expressed in this piece and can be experienced through their balanced sonority, flip sides of the music, so to speak, that show the world from the other side and thus our thinking and our perception of time and the spatial depth of the sound open up new perspectives.

Rene Wohlhauser