René Wohlhauser: Kasamarowa

RENÉ WOHLHAUSER KASAMARÓWA

THE KASAMARÓWA CYCLE
for soprano and baritone

blay for soprano and baritone (2009), on an own onomatopoeic poem,
Ergon 40, No. 2, musical work number 1519

blay for soprano and baritone is also the second piece in the cycle Iguur-Blay-Luup, which in turn is the fourth part of the great Marakra Cycle is, and the first piece of Kasamarowa cycle. So it represents a kind of bifurcation point, a splitting of a musical flow of development into two independent flow systems.
Means Sulawedic in the emblematics of the fictional language igur a metaphor that in blay puzzled by an unexpectedly evoked resonance to in oops to resurrect in a changed, so to speak purified form and in a different context.
blay is divided into three formally clearly distinguishable parts by different structural types, separated from each other by short spoken interludes and gradually accelerated by a system of tempo modulations. While the first two parts of this piece are canons, the third part consists of the transformation of a duo of the 15th/16th century canon master. Century, Pierre de la Rue, the age of the emergence of emblematics in European art.

Charyptin fragments for soprano and baritone (2010), on an own onomatopoeic poem,
Ergon 42, No. 2, musical work number 1557

This piece is about exploring the various in-between areas between whispered, spoken and sung, searching for in-between spaces and another category of material that is neither spoken nor sung. Fragile states of vocal expression should be made audible.
The piece consists of three cycles, whereby the 1st cycle is divided into 6 phrases that appear only briefly and then disappear again, the 2nd cycle is held together by a continuous baritone line on which the soprano sets his counterpoints, and the 3rd cycle consists of a canon of both voices with a baritone epilogue in reverse.
The onomatopoeic texts reflect the applied ("cryptic") compositional processes, for example by using the title Charyptine is hidden in torn apart text fragments resembling loud sounds and is played around without, however, appearing in detail.

Marakra code 02.2 for soprano and baritone (2011), on a personal poem between sound poetry and semi-semantics,
Ergon 44, No. 6, musical work number 1619

A  Code is, among other things, a key for transferring encrypted texts into plain text and vice versa. For example, in Morse code, a dot is considered Process or  Illustration of the letter "e". Or in engineering, speed is considered Process of the way and the time.
Is there a code that makes unfamiliar sound sequences understandable? This question can relate to both language and music. For example, there is the well-known question of whether there is a code for listening to or understanding contemporary music. More interesting for me would be the question of whether there is a code that we could use to open doors to as yet undiscovered musical worlds.

Uom Raswékje for soprano and baritone (2012), on own formant generated phonemes,
Ergon 45, No. 1, musical work number 1637

It is possible to set a text (or several texts) to music in a traditional way, in which the music reflects the mood of the text. It is also possible that the music ironically questions or counteracts the text. Furthermore, it is possible that the music is deliberately composed against the text. As a further variant, the music can be designed in such a way that it does not respond to the text and follows its own path.
Then there is the reverse possibility, which consists of composing the music first and then looking for suitable lyrics.
In recent years I've been working on another possibility. I composed music and then listened to the formant structure of this music in order to hear the vocal formants in the instrumental sounds in a transformation process. This resulted in different (sound-poetic) artificial languages ​​derived from the respective music. In this way I achieved a closer connection between the music and the sound of speech than when the lyrics come from outside.
The focus of my research work in the present piece was that I started from overtone resonance sounds and spoken sibilants as the starting material and composed a further development that was as strict as possible in order to then gain the formant-generated phonetic speech material from it. In this way I tried to achieve the closest possible connection between music and speech by interweaving vocals and instruments as closely as possible.

Meragor nit for soprano and baritone (2013), on an own onomatopoeic text,
Ergon 48, music work number 1657

When every text seems too profane to be set to music, all that remains is the complete absence of the text. (Literary texts of high quality can become profane and therefore inappropriate when they have been used too much and thereby appear worn and worn out. This loss of substance occurs when the essence has exhausted its power. When worn things are reused, they appear trivial and superficial.) The complete absence of text leads to purely vocal music.
The piece begins on a single vowel. Only gradually, after pure vocal music has become established, does the initial vowel change, which changes the color of the music. And only at the end of the piece, after the music of the pitches has already faded away, does text in the form of associative (unused) sound poetry briefly enter the piece.
Slow movements, like under the microscope, are characteristic of this piece. This results in a strong pull of great calm. A meditative immersion in music. Getting involved in musical expressiveness.
Analogous to the absence of text semantics, the musical structure lacks any concise melody and rhythm. This draws attention entirely to the perception of the intervallic progression, which is grammatically strict and differentiated and refined by microtones and glissandi. This sound progression forms an essential basic content of the sound history of this piece.

Kasamarowa for soprano and baritone (2014), on an own onomatopoeic poem,
Ergon 52, music work number 1697

With reference to classical vocal polyphony, which founded Western polyphony since the Notre-Dame epoch in the late Middle Ages, this piece is about a return to the essential expressive parameters of this compositional method in order to reach a magical state. The melodic-horizontal dimension of the movement and the contrapuntal-interval quality of the harmony create a flow in time. This flow of time is primarily about exploring the specific coloring of the intervals and their color relationships to one another.
The color and effect of an interval, e.g. the octave, is completely different, depending on whether it sounds in the high, middle or low register, whether it is at the beginning or end of a phrase, whether it sounds in the forte after a strenuous ascent, whether you whisper is produced in a very relaxed manner or whether it is colored with many moving consonants, as at the end of the piece.
Being in sound as the presence of the present, which cancels being in time, has a fundamentally existential meaning for the experience of timelessness.
Overcoming temporality in thinking by immersing oneself in the tonality of music and the language of onomatopoeic poetry thus enable being in beings.

IGUUR for baritone solo (2009), to an own onomatopoeic poem,
Ergon 40/1c, music work number 1531

Various texture types characterize the piece igur for baritone solo: Urged cries of distress are thrown into the silence at the beginning, separated from each other by pauses in tension. Gradually, however, dialectic contrasting material is infiltrated (quasi spoken). After an accentuation of the contrasts in the 2nd part, the 3rd part becomes much denser and more lively, only to end with long tones and a whole bar break as compensation. The glissandi are formally at the beginning of the 4th part, which is now more special and experimental, until correctly spoken for the first time marks the beginning of the last part, in which different texture types come together.

THE SULAWEDIC CYCLE
Sulawedic songs, chants and vocal pieces on their own onomatopoeic texts for soprano, baritone (both also as musical speaking voices) and piano (2005 / 2006 / 2008 / 2009),
Ergon 31, Nos. 1–7

The seven-part cycle is designed in such a way that each piece deals with a different aspect: transparency, chords, resolution / punctuality, on the verge of singing, musical speaking, key surface play, obscurity. This sequence also indicates the direction of musical development. The order of the pieces is:

1. gelsuraga for soprano and piano (2005), Ergon 31, No. 1, musical work number 1183
2. slope gomeka for soprano and piano (2005), Ergon 31, No. 2, musical work number 1304
3. suragimanä (»Zerdehnte Zeit«) for soprano and piano (2006), Ergon 31, No. 3, version b, musical work number 1306
4. Duett (»On the edge of singing«) for soprano and baritone a cappella (Ergon 31, No. 4, Version a)
in the 3rd version (2008, musical work number 1481)
and in the appendix/double version for baritone solo (Ergon 31, No. 4, version b, 2008, musical work number 1488)
5. flooding music, a musical speech piece for two persons (Ergon 31, No. 5, version a, 2005, musical work number 1173),
or for two people in the version for one person alone (Ergon 31, No. 5, version b, 2005, musical work number 1489)
6. on the keyboard for musical speaking voice and key surface player (Ergon 31, No. 6, version a.1, 2005, music work number 1177),
or as a virtual duet for a speaking keyboard player alone (Ergon 31, No. 6, version a.2, 2005, music work number 1177b),
or for musical speaking voice and speaking keyboard player (Spoken version, Ergon 31, No. 6, version b, 2005/2009, music work number 1515)
7. Conclusion for deep piano (2006) Ergon 31, No. 7, musical work number 1313

The voice goes through a process of transformation from normal singing to techniques of so-called New Singing to speaking music in various combinations, while the piano progresses from the normal sound through pauses to only noisy key surface play. Due to the increasing changes in line-up or line-up variants accompanying this process of transformation (vocal duo or solo, musical speech duo or solo, noise-sound duo, dark piano solo; hence the differentiation in the titles), the initially traditional piano song or song duo is aesthetically broken up, especially since the gradually dissolve into onomatopoeic texts and become completely silent in the last piece.

Each onomatopoeic poem of the first three pieces of the cycle has a self-contained language coloring and language rhythm and also something like a grammatical structure of an artificial language. They are, so to speak, semantically charged only through the gestures of the music. This makes them sound like a language that you sometimes think you understand, but then don't quite understand. (Already in the title one notices that it is not »Sulawesian« but »Sulawesian«.) This movement on the border of comprehensibility and thus also on the border of controllability between the conscious and the unconscious, where one might sense the vision of a different sound world is something that interests me very much.
Rene Wohlhauser

The vocal lyrics can also be found at www.renewohlhauser.com
There you can also read the essay Eine absolute vocal music – About my sound poetry.

Kasamarowa
Vocal chamber works by Rene Wohlhauser, performed by the Duo Simolka-Wohlhauser and premiered by the duo at European tours in 2005-2014

The Kasamarowa Cycle 43:30
[01] blay for soprano and baritones (2009) 05:30
[02] Charyptin fragments for soprano and baritones (2010) 04:37
[03] Marakra code 02.2 for soprano and baritones (2011) 06:27
[04] Uom Raswékje for soprano and baritones (2012) 07:56
[05] Meragor nit for soprano and baritones (2013) 08:34
[06] Kasamarowa for soprano and baritones (2014)10:26

[07] igur for baritone solo (2009) 04:27

The Sulawedic Cycle 25:51
[08] gelsuraga for soprano and piano (2005) 02:50
[10] slope gomeka for soprano and piano (2005) 02:52
[11] suragimanä for soprano and piano (2005) 05:08
[12] Duett for soprano and baritones (2008) 02:57
[13] flooding music for two musical speakers (2005) 02:48
[14] on the keyboard for musical speakers and piano (2005) 04:06
[15] Ausklang for deep piano (2006) 02:10
Appendix:
[16] Duett double version for baritone solo (2008) 03:00

Total playing time: 73:48

World Premiere Recordings

Christine Simolka, soprano
Rene Wohlhauser, baritone / piano

03/2017

“The 'Wohlhauser Edition' at NEOS is available Kasamarowa now at “Volume” 4, so to speak. The CD combines two cycles (…) Here, river systems and language systems of a personal geography intertwine (…) The pieces are recorded and produced with the utmost care, and the Simolka-Wohlhauser duo delivers archaic language work and an intonational one masterpiece. (…) makes the two CDs*, which also provide detailed information in the booklet texts, much more than just documentation of the work.” (Andreas Fatton)

* Andreas Fatton writes in his article about two NEOS CDs with music by Wohlhauser: “Kasamaròwa” and “Manía” (NEOS 11416)