fröhliche Verunstaltungen (Musik als Neurose) (2012)

[engl. translation of the title: happy deformations (music as neurosis)]

line-up: flute (also piccolo), oboe, clarinet (also clarinet in e-flat, bass clarinet), bassoon, horn, trombone, violin, viola, violoncello, accordeon, piano, percussion
duration: 14′
date of premiere: 9.2.2013, opening concert of Impuls Academy, Helmut List Halle Graz, Austria
Klangforum Wien, Enno Poppe

 

(painting by Nino Hofmann)

It is not the sound that occupies the centre of attention in that piece, but the new forms and possibilities of musical gesture or expression. Searching for the so-called unencrypted material seems to me to be currently obsolete. Therefore profane, banal and clichéd phrases stand at the starting point of this piece. They are distorted and disturbed in the process of composition, also under the influence of the random principle. This way, a seemingly dilettante but also eccentric or autistic musical demeanour is meant to emerge. An un-organic intermingling, superimposition, counteraction and disorder of the various sound events are looked for; the aim is total heterogeneity, a grotesque aesthetic of disparity, of the projected and the incomplete. This also characterizes my approach to tonality in this piece – that’s to say: I treat it not as it(was historically developed, as a formative, meaningful and connective element but on the contrary, as a centrifugal force that interferes with and challenges the homogeneity of sound, distorting and deforming it. Tonality is meant to be neither quotation, symbol or metaphor, no foreign matter throughout the whole of the composition, but its integral part in the form of an interference, a disorganized point of reference, problematic material or hazardous waste. And all this within a contradictory simultaneity which derives its meaning solely from this colourful mix of chaotic accumulations and densities of information, or, to quote Christoph Schlingensief, to whom the subtitle of this piece also refers: I believe that there is more truth in an accumulation of imbecility than in an accumulation of truth.