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| | | winter and winter (germany) #ww 126 cd mauricio kagel “quirinus' liebeskuss” compact disc - quirinus' liebeskuss [für vokalensemble und instrumente]
- serenade [für drei spieler]
- doppelsextett [für instrumentalensemble]
| | winter and winter press release... |
| quirinus' liebeskuss
in 2006 the schönberg ensemble, reinbert de leeuw and winter & winter received the prestigious edison award for the album »die stücke der windrose« by mauricio kagel. on december 24th, 2006, the great jewish-russian-german composer mauricio kagel celebrates his 75th birthday together with the schönberg ensemble in the musiekgebouw in amsterdam.
winter & winter presents the debut recording of »quirinus' liebeskuss«, »serenade« and »doppelsextett« performed by the schönberg ensemble and the nederlands kamerkoor conducted by reinbert de leeuw. special thanks to kunststiftung nrw for their great support to make this project possible. mauricio kagel himself directed the recording session, supervised the editing session and created the sound design. with the following text he explains with intriguing and worth knowing background information these three new works:
quirinus' liebeskuss (for vocal ensemble and instruments), 2000/2001
years ago, after a concert in hong kong, i started writing down monosyllabic german words. it struck me that this accumulation of short, meaningful words – pronounced with appropriate nasal delivery and a bit of sing-song – sounded strangely chinese: "buzz off!", "leave me!", "look out!", "not now!", "take care!". for chinese ears, such expressions of command would be incomprehensible; on the other hand, for others who had mastered german, the scanned rhythms might clearly set the stage for an imitated language. could this idea be turned into the basis of a vocal composition?
after that, with no great hopes, i began looking for literary texts or poems already based on the principle of monosyllables. that lasted quite a while. (...)
one day, i received a private edition from my friend ernst brücher. it was a collection of the poems that had accompanied him throughout his life. this anthology for personal use might be comparable to a self-produced compact disc made by a music lover, stringing together just those parts of pieces that touched his heart. and what do i see? "the change of human affairs", "xli. libeskuss" by quirinus kuhlmann (1651-1689).
the poem was mainly written in single-syllable words, but really had nothing to do with my original idea of setting texts in a sort of phonetic pidgin-german.
who on earth was quirinus kuhlmann?! from the simple figures 1651-1689 i could deduce that he died at the rather young age of 38. born in breslau and influenced by the writings of jakob böhme, kuhlmann became a fanatical adherent of millenarianism, the doctrine of a thousand-year rule of christ on earth at the end of historical time, in a paradisial kingdom of peace and earthly joys. after studies in jena, he wrote his "libesküsse" at the age of only twenty.
one can't read kuhlmann's late poems without thinking of hölderlin. his chief work "der kühlpsalter" is already modern lyric poetry, with a wealth of obvious and hidden references, baroque mannerisms, all kinds of number relationships, playfully mechanical combinations of letters, and a fondness for techniques that genealogically go back to the ars lulliana of raimundus. the arts of language and poetry are rubbed against each other like two millstones. considering the radical nature of their mysticism, one could describe these texts as expressions of a "surrealistic religiosity". here, eloquence and fundamentalism have become inseparable: the surrealism arises from an excessively private reality, which no longer pays attention to the ecclesias-tical strategies of his time. it takes shape autonomously, beyond reality, grows imaginary and bizarre; as so often, a stable canon of superstition takes over from the active function of belief.
this "xlith loving kiss" that i was lucky enough to happen upon is a typical product of kuhlmann's 'combinatorial art', in which objective opposites determine the content of the poem, but subjective automatisms undermine the traditional structure of the sonnet. the rattling sound of the monosyllabic concepts is reminiscent of a – somewhat old-fashioned – railway, where the start of each new listing involves a change of track. the succession of word is not bizarre, but poetic, not arbitrary, but purposeful. but to what end? yes, what end? to the last two lines, hastening towards narrow, interlacing paths, so as to proclaim a 'morality of life' that "embraces human wisdom".
so now i had found my text, far removed from the initial chinoiserie, but just as playful. so what to do? a good question, if one has decided to turn a poem of such transcendence into music. in this case, the main focus for me, since the words of the text were mainly monosyllabic, was to find a compositional method that, as far as possible, served to assist comprehensibility. in the poem, the oppositions of good and beneficial concepts, and bad and reprehensible ones are, admittedly, conceptually fused and strictly interrelated, but one must keep their rhythmic succession in mind if one seeks to maintain the lines' forward progression.
i decided to compose two successive versions of my original text, up to the point where the last two lines of the sonnet combine as a chorale. in the first reading, the 'positive' concepts are coupled with a 2/4 metre, and the negative ones with 3/8. in the second reading, though, i reversed this, so that everything pleasant was in 3/8, and its opposite in 2/4. through this dual metrical interpretation, i was seeking to make audible the relative significance of good and bad; the lapidary interchange of bar divisions struck me as an appropriately specific way of doing this.
the work ends with a third, compressed reading of the poem: here the scanning of the poem is no longer mainly homophonic, but cluster-like. concurrent intersections occur only on words that link basic concepts: "from", "comes", "the", "loves", "seeks", "what's", "avoids", "and", "where".
»quirinus' liebeskuss« is now complete, and i keep trying to reread the poem as if it was for the first time. of course, i don't succeed: i often spend ages staring at these letters. but whenever i think of rewriting the composition, my ideas about shaping the music are quite differently focused. that's how it has to be. ultimately, the "change of human affairs" is a pendulum in perpetuum moto. but the eternal tick-tock gets slightly disturbed.
serenade (for three players), 1994/95
my work on this composition opened with a rash of questions:
what sort of piece actually warrants being called a serenade? is this a genre that only permits narrow exegesis? or is it more closely allied with atmospheric qualities – with music-making beneath clear, cloudless skies (italian: sereno), out of doors (al sereno) and generally in the evening (alla sera)? is the genre's defining feature its setting or its contents?
when we reflect on familiar terms and reexamine the meaning and spirit of their definition or underlying principle, it often happens that the answers we receive spawn further questions. such was the case here.
our notion of what constitutes the essence of a serenade is quite vague. this is probably for the best, for it allows us to seek out hidden aspects lurking at its roots. to write a serenade can never be a less than joyful occupation. i envisioned a poetic divertimento admitting various explanations, associations and presumptions. there were three players, but a wide range of flutes, percussion and plucked instruments. it is as if the theme latent in every serenade – the love's song to his beloved – is made manifest here in trios of contrasting origin and scoring.
double sextet (for instrumental ensemble), 2000/2001
six woodwinds and six strings combine in this piece to make an ensemble which lacks precisely those instruments that normally function as intermediaries between high and low registers. that is, no clarinets and no violas, but instead two flautists (playing piccolo, flute and alto flute), two oboists (oboe and cor anglais) and two bassoonists (bassoon and contrabassoon), plus two violinists, two cellists and two double bassists.
this is one of a few works in which i have tried to create an organic musical form in which the musical ideas expounded at the start are the sole source of everything that develops later. in order to do this, it seemed to me that a severe restriction of the means was necessary. there is a long tradition to support this idea, especially if the discipline needed to invent new combinations of the material is maintained consistently to the very end. so i decided to write the piece using only two metres throughout, namely 2/4 and 3/8, and to give each of them different musical material.
there is a very close connection between the »doppelsextett« and my piece for vocal and instrumental ensemble »quirinus' liebeskuss« (»quirinus' loving kiss«). in that, choir and instruments alternate rapidly in an incessant dialogue, as if giving commentaries on commentaries in an endless spiral. from the first, i had an idea of the greatest possible independence of the choral and instrumental parts; of writing a work in which the vocal and instrumental ensembles with their different sounds would be interdependent but would simultaneously preserve their individual identities. the paradox was what enabled me, in the end, to compose the »double sextet«. the outcome was in truth my second kammersymphonie.
text by mauricio kagel, translated by richard toop
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mauricio kagel quirinus' liebeskuss
n° 910 126-2
cd
2006
musiciansschönberg ensemblenederlands kamerkoorreinbert de leeuw |
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