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Alan Hiario kinotheken-pièce for violin, bass clarinet, accordion, piano and projection Rolf Riehm Schlaf, schlaf, John Donne, schlaf tief und quäl dich nicht for violin, bass clarinet, accordion and keyboard ensemble recherche “At its best moments, art is a cultural articulation that has arrived at its furthest point. At this point, one does not look back, nor does one fulfill any expectations; one is fixated on this point. This is ‘radical irresponsibility,’ for at its ultimate apex, art does not care at all about obligations of any kind or making good on any promises.” For the composer Rolf Riehm (b. 1937), music is thought and experience set in sound. For this reason, he does not employ any constructive methods based on tables or rows, but organizes his material freely, based on his compositional conceptions. Characteristic of Riehm’s aesthetics is the endeavor to achieve an, always individual, synthesis of creative assertion and historical conditions. His works reflect conditions of the material, take ironic account of listening habits, and engage in social critique on the basis of tendencies immanent in the material, since composing, for Riehm, is a way of reacting to extramusical states of affairs and situations with musical tools. Since about the mid-1990s, his work has reserved a special place for “melody,” and this is especially true in the composition performed at the sixth Dialog concert. In this piece, “melody” is like an abstract notion of “song.” “Melody,” for Riehm, is “a positively ecstatic and enticing vortex, a conceptual electric current, not just mere melodies but musical lineaments, intensifications, a sheer flowing forth that exerts an infinite attraction upon me.” Song is also the theme of Schlaf, schlaf, John Donne, schlaf tief und quäl dich nicht (Sleep, sleep, John Donne, sleep deeply and do not be distressed), although the piece is performed without a vocalist. A mere sampler provides its linguistic and vocal material. The instruments, by contrast, function as articulating organs, “extensions of the voice.” In the first half, they accompany, paraphrase, and elaborate the melismas of the sampled and electroacoustically processed singing voice. The verse “Schlaf, schlaf, John Donne, schlaf tief und quäl dich nicht” from Joseph Brodsky’s Great Elegy for John Donne forms the backbone of the piece; every single word becomes the textual basis for vocal melismas. About halfway through the work, a recitation by Brodsky himself is played, with techno rhythms added underneath it. Then the sampler produces a pedal point with the syllable “und,” which is not released into the words “quäl dich nicht” (“do not be distressed”) until the end of the piece: “Around the conjunction ‘und,’ the song’s melismatic energy freezes and shifts to the instruments, which have thus far played a purely accompanying role, and which now give all they have in an enormous exclamation. At precisely the moment where the voice sings the soul right out of the body, one hears the instruments and not the singing voice and, what is more, on a part of the text that is meaningless and empty. By contrast, the singing voice itself has already frozen over at the very first sound.” The Filipino composer Alan Hilario, whose latest work will receive its premiere at the same concert, was born in 1967, grew up in Manila, and received his musical training as a violinist under Gilopez Kabayao and others. From 1985 to 1988 he studied composition at the University of the Philippines. From 1988 to 1992 he was a violinist with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1985 and 1992 he worked on a wide variety of projects with film and theater directors. Between 1992 and 1996 Hilario received a fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and studied composition with Mathias Spahlinger at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg and electronic music with Mesias Maiguashca. In 1997 he received the Kompositionspreis der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart. Since 1998, Hilario’s compositions have been performed at various major contemporary music festivals. In 2000 he took part in the Stage d’Automne at IRCAM in Paris and was an instructor at the fortieth Internationale Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. He lives and works in Ulm as an independent composer. |
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