New music for Tuchfühlung 2 Körperkonturen
When the regional arts centre Kunsthaus Langenberg proposed body contours as the central theme for its Tuchfühlung 2 festival, 250 visual artists from across Europe took up the challenge. Each artist was given a life-size solid steel casting in the outline of the human body with which to work. A wide variety of artistic responses ensued. The resulting artworks were displayed in various locations around the historic part of Langenberg throughout the summer of 2000. Concepts such as the human form being a communicative tool were explored, resulting in a highly experimental visual environment. In order to create a resonance in the most literal sense, musicians, actors, dancers and writers were also invited to participate in the event. These CDs document the concert series Singender Stahl (Sounding Steel) and Resurrection, the musical extension of the physical contours; involving thirteen composers from Europe, Asia and Australia.
How can a steel-cast body contour inspire a composer? This very concrete departure point only leads to further questions; what is the relationship between music and the human body? what specifically musical ideas can be derived from the contour? what is the relationship between music and the visual arts? what physical responses does the music create in the listener? Singender Stahl and Resurrection are two parallel conceptual frameworks to address these issues. Ross Hazeldine developed the Resurrection project, which is a cycle of six works for ensemble and soundtrack; whereas for the Singender Stahl project Sigmund and Gisbert Watty invited responses from composers in Norway, Germany and Italy, with no restriction other than the nature of the instrumental ensemble.
Björn Sverre Kristensen composed Frülingsmusik in an attempt to capture the moods and colours of spring in an entertaining form.
Spiegelkontaktfabrik by Maurizio Pisati follows a path of many unpredictable turns. The score is open to performance by any instrument, with the physical breath of the performer emerging as the dominant aspect of the realisation. The tape on which the music is based uses sounds of photocopiers - true mirrors, artificial reproduction tools of beauty and deformation - whereas the live performance reflects a percussive interior brought to life by the instrument in a continuous interplay of mirrors, reflexes, inversions and deviations.
Plastischer Samba und déjà vu, oder blaue Blumen in deinem Haar by Øyvind Torvund is a composition in which the five instrumentalists develop precisely defined relationships, constantly changing in their rhythmic attractions and melodic associations. The music can be considered a series of variations on rhythmic and melodic contours. It can also be seen as an attempted caricature and deflection of the material indicative of the composer's background in jazz and free improvisation.
Ida Helene Heidel directly confronts the physical nature of the project in her work Figura. The contours of the sculpture are visually reflected in the score and permeate all aspects of the music. The original sculpture is also used as a percussion instrument within the ensemble.
Orgia forzata (aus den siebzehn Tafeln) by Riccardo Vaglini, dedicated to the composer Fausto Sebastiani, is a study of uncontrollable compression, the overlapping and repetition of actions, events and resonating bodies in extremely reduced spaces and time frames. The composer explains: I am obsessed by the idea that the weight and warmth of the earth which buries a still living body prolongs our suffering, so that our characteristic features will finally unify, break up and mould together.
Joerg Todzy links close personal relationships with the image of the body contour in Music for Konstantinos B., Rania, Don… (with attachment). It is an emotional review of moments of presence, absence and departure. The music derives largely from converting visual contours into sound, specifically interweaving computer generated graphics mapped into musical notation.
Resurrection, overseen by Australian composer and publisher Ross Hazeldine, is a cycle of six ensemble pieces by composers based in Australia, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands; Andrée Greenwell, Ross Hazeldine, Volker Heyn, Rainer Linz, Paul Panhuysen and Sachiyo Tsurumi. An audio recording documenting the destruction of the steel human form was made in Langenberg by Norbert Bauer and K.H. Wilkesmann, and forwarded to Hazeldine in Australia. The soundtrack of hammers destroying the sculpture was cut into six (slightly overlapping) sections and distributed to the six composers. The composers were deliberately left unaware of each other's musical solutions or methods. The result is six pieces, ranging from 4.30 to 5 minutes in durations using different instrumentation and different approaches to interaction with the acoustic ensemble. A wide variety of means was employed to analyse the relatively static audio part. The performance of Resurrection on this CD presents the six pieces in the same order as the original soundtrack.
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