From Lead Sheet to Hip Solos

SKU: PR.11440505S

UPC: 680160008391. 11 x 14 inches.

Although structurally it subdivides into five movements, the entire quartet emerges as one vast continuum. There are no formal breaks between movements. However, certain musical signposts can be discerned, associated with each of the movements' terminations and new beginnings. The opening movement, The Nostalgia of Clanging Bell Sonorities, begins floating on recurrent Bbs whose soft rhythmic flow slowly puts into motion strong undercurrents suggestive of the latent power of water... After several suggestions of tolling bells, the movement gradually fades into hushed tones of veiled and very distant sonorities. It uses a unique effect, for the first time in a musical context, conveyed through the use of extra heavy practice mutes. The second movement, The Spill of Water, disengages itself from the first through its distinct contrast in tempo. Water moves fast, and when it splashes, it tends to run wildly. In this case, it happens to be bubbly water that gushes forth bodly... smashing across rocky shorelines. So, too, the music attempts to conjure such moods. At the end of this movement, a cello cadenza emerges, introducing an introspective type of melodicism. The third movement, The Poignancy of Memory, contains many silences as it tries to convey memory through fragmented remembrances much like often occur in our dream state. Progressing through several slowly building images, it gradually works itself into juxtaposition of musical images. Towards the movement's end, high harmonics are sounding in all four instruments while left hand pizzicato notes in the cello pluck the last remembrances of this central core. Almost imperceptibly, the viola assumes leadership as it dissolves into: The fourth movement, The Fluidity of Motion, which has mostly the viola, but also the cello, articulating lyrical statements against sheets of sound conjured up by the two violins playing a flood of swirling figures, evokes a kind of static motion in space. Here , the virtually imperceptible manner in which this hushed whisper continues incessantly, can suggest the potential fluidity with which movement may inch forward... Later into the fourth movement, two fairly extended solos by the second and then the first violins, lead to a kind of spontaneous dialogue amont the four instrumentalists. Eventually, this musical conversation gets caught up in: The fifth movement's The Rush of Time, which opens with a hushed flurry of speed, precipitates the Finale. It generates, at first slowly, but then very swiftly, whole shifts of rhythmic fields that initially seem to conflict with one another. Ultimately, this use of psycho-rhythmics contributes to an on-rush seem of motion and time. Rhythmic changes are, at times, abruptly precipitated with but little or no preparation creating a kind of inevitability in forward thrust, while the movement rushes forward with a feeling of gradual and continuous acceleration. It gathers density as more and more notes are piled progressively upon successive beats. The attempt is to spark tension and ignite excitement by means of frenetic confrontations of dissimilitudes. Ultimately - with the help of time - these polarities centrifically spin out their own destinies with their accompanying fall-out and own inevitable resolutions.

SKU: BR.PB-5714

ISBN 9790004216514. 10.5 x 14 inches.

More than my earlier works, this one is interspersed with metrically bound rhythms and musicianly characters that constantly recrystallize and drift towards or away from familiar situations.The familiar: These are dance-like figures and music-making formulas, but also songs and, in two cases fragments of Bach's music - playfully collected memories of impressions in which - consciously and unconsciously - I am embodied with that collective comfort in whose protection bourgeois thinking and feeling, magically protected, grow up and emerge apart.(It is well known that such security has its fetishes from the childlike to the adult stage: Home, religious bond, holidays, tradition, longing for childhood - the superficiality may have little idea of the depth that opens up underneath. There is also no question that we are still marked by such security even when the contradictions and alienation of existence force us to step out of their protection, to recognize and act upon reality, and to oppose the domination of such inner bonds where their original truth has become the fatal untruth of comfortable illusion, stubbornly and fearfully conjured idyll and reactionary narrow-mindedness.My music feeds on figures in which such memories are encapsulated. It deals with them not much differently than in other pieces with the elements of the traditional musical concept of material, having already always reflected compositionally as a product of sociality and anticipation of musical expression, i.e. it moved into a structurally expanded context and expressively redefined from there.Such an approach aims at overcoming lack of freedom: grasping as part of conceiving, i.e. not philosophical reflection, but rather an artistically gripping reflex by intervening in the physical immediacy of such predetermined elements. These penetrate and infect the structural events, inducing a musicianship that cannot be relied upon; the music jumps onto rhythms like onto moving vehicles, allows for being carried by them until they deform or disintegrate. This creates an incline of rhythmically shaped situations: sequence and interweaving of dances and structures.The role of the solo string quartet is versatile, obbligato and concertante, leading and accompanying in a changing sense. Set as a chamber music apparatus in an orchestral landscape, it repeatedly forces its own sound dimensions onto the orchestra, it must accept being drowned out at times, it nests in the holes of tutti fields, it acts as a louse in the fur, forcing one to listen in and out.The Tanzsuite with Deutschlandlied is structured as follows:I. Section. 1. Introduction - 2. Waltz - 3. March - 4. Bridge -II. Section. 5. Siciliano - 6. Capriccio - 7. Valse lente -III. Section. 8. Bridge - 9. Gigue - 10. Tarantelle - 11. Bridge -IV. Section. 12 Aria I - 13 Polka - 14 Aria IIV. Section. 15. Introduction - 16 Gallop - 17 Coda (Aria III)All 17 parts merge into one another.(Helmut Lachenmann, 1980)CDs/LP/DVD:Arditti-Quartett, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, cond. Olaf HenzoldCD Montaigne Auvidis MO 782019Berner Streichquartett, Sinfonieorchester des SWF, cond. Sylvain Cambreling (Excerpt)CD BMG/RCA 74321 73510 2 (Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000)Berner Streichquartett, Sinfonieorchester des SWF, cond. Sylvain CambrelingLP DMR 1028-30Arditti Quartet, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, cond. Hans Zender Excerpt on CD ,,Auswahl von zehn Urauffuhrungen aus 70 Jahren, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg Arditti Quartet, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, cond. Sylvain Cambreling DVD ,,Lachenmann-Perspektiven 6 (Breitkopf & Hartel, BHM 7816) Bibliography:Cavalotti, Pietro: Differenzen. Poststrukturalistische Aspekte in der Musik der 1980er Jahre am Beispiel von Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough und Gerard Grisey (= Sonus. Schriften zur Musik, hrsg. von Andreas Ballsteadt, Band 8), Schliengen: Argus 2006, pp. 79-128.Das sind doch alles Deutschlandlieder! Helmut Lachenmann im Gesprach mit Michael Rebhahn, in: Der Taktgeber. Das Magazin der Jungen Deutschen Philharmonie, Heft 40 (Sommer 2019), S. 6f.Stawowy, Milena: Fluchtversuche in die Hohle des Lowen. Helmut Lachenmanns Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied, in: MusikTexte 67/68 (1997), pp. 77-90.Toop, Richard: Concept and Context: A Historiographic Consideration of Lachenmanns Orchestral Works, in: Helmut Lachenmann Inward Beauty, hrsg. von Dan Albertson, Contemporary Music Review 23 (2004), Heft 3/4, pp. 125-144.

World premiere: Donaueschingen (Donaueschinger Musiktage), October 18, 1980.