The fascination of physical phenomena always awakens the artistic spirit of research. Even if exploring them is the domain of science, it is also possible to get close to their essence through sound - sometimes even closer. In the ensemble piece Fire Fragile Flight by the almost forgotten American composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, for example, you can actually see the reflection of the sun on falling leaves shimmering. Sarah Nemtsov evokes the soft, firm feeling of "treading on moss" in her composition MOOS using an unusual indirect method of sound production. Márton Illés attempts to assimilate a wide variety of instruments to the human voice, in particular the primal sounds that it produces beyond words and singing. The instrumental sounds grow together so organically that the Ensemble becomes a kind of highly expressive creature.
Meanwhile, the Greek-French composer, engineer and architect Iannis Xenakis based almost all of his works on very specific scientific reference systems - a practice that is unprecedented in the history of music and also comes to the fore in his ensemble piece Thalleïn (Greek for "sprout"). Using the theory of sevenths, he allows a wide variety of tiny motifs to grow and proliferate, transform and intertwine to form organic webs of sound. 100 years after Xenakis's birth, composer Michael Pelzel reflects on the "raw and archaic force" of the music that has grown out of such rigorous processes in his new work Urgewalt Xenakis - Im Sog der Transformation.
Photo: Jörg Brüggemann
Text: RuhrTriennale