COMPOSING MEANS CREATING AN INSTRUMENT
A cycle of concerts dedicated to Helmut Lachenmann
“Music is dead” was the controversial proclamation made by Helmut Lachenmann at the music congress in Donaueschingen in 1996. The words struck the world of music and musicians like a thunderbolt and seemed to shake the very foundations even of Lachenmann’s own work as a com- poser. But for him this apodictic statement meant nothing less than that “music must always be re-awakened to new life”. How can that be done? “Composing means creating an instrument” was one of Lachenmann’s early principles. Accordingly, he began to question traditions and habits and break up formalisms and encrustations.
Culture of sound and noises
That does not mean, however, that he rejects the familiar out of hand. “I employ the same ‘good old’ violins as Vivaldi composed his music for, but in my music they serve to produce a completely different culture of sound and noises. And I choose the word ‘culture’ advisedly, for noises, like polished harmonic sounds, can be performed (and heard) in a manner that is either pure or impure, lovely or ugly, lively or dead, intelligent or without much understanding.” Lachenmann’s music offers new horizons to the listener, challenging him to unwonted aural perceptions. Eschewing those key stimuli of conventional ‘nice sounds’ to which audiences react with feelings of pleasurable comfort, he endeavours to awaken in his listeners a sensory apparatus for a world of strange and foreign sounds. “I believe”, says Lachenmann, “that the musicians themselves gradually become aware of the ‘sensuousness’ of this music. I notice that in the way more and more of them get a certain enjoyment out of discovering the music while at the same time developing executional techniques which do not exist in any of the manuals. The result is, in its own way, beautiful.”
Susanne Stähr
LACHENMANN
19 August 2002, 7.30 p.m.
Mozarteum
Works by Lachenmann and Beethoven
Eduard Brunner Clarinet
Walter Grimmer Violoncello
Siegfried Mauser Piano
26 August 2002, 8 p.m.
Stadtkino
Works by Helmut Lachenmann
Vienna Klangforum
Hans Zender Conductor
Helmut Lachenmann Narrator
27 August 2002, 7.30 p.m.
Mozarteum
Works by Helmut Lachenmann
Yukiko Sugawara Piano
Wilhelm Bruck Guitar
Theodor Ross Guitar
29 August 2002, 7.30 p.m.
Works by Helmut Lachenmann
Arditti Quartet
Tickets for 27 and 29 August
€ 15, 22, 30 and 45
for 19 and 26 August on inquiry
Alfred Hrdlicka,
Schubert: My path has brought me to a graveyard, 1996/97
Tickets are available from
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