naivsuper 015 ** stock11.de - VA 2009 ** CD
cover art: naivsuper Team
A work unfettered by compromise or concession - Martin Schüttler sees these as the ideal prerequisites for his compositional activity and thus criticizes the kind of extrinsic determination that is increasingly being regarded as unavoidable. The autonomy of the aesthetic process is subjugated to pragmatic stipulations: who will be the interpreters? Where will the performance take place? What is expected? - in the end, the composer finds himself in a web of demands and conventions that, to a considerable degree, marginalize the fact that his artistic activity is intended to do more than merely satisfy a service industry. His cycle schöner leben, which has occupied him since 2004, is intended as a counter-model which emphasizes the self-determination of the composer: »The pieces come about because I want to write them, and because they appeal to performers whose work I value and with whom I wish to collaborate.«
Thus schöner leben 1 is a musical scene for a countertenor, whom Schüttler has imbued with the aura of a droll cabaret-style entertainer. He accompanies himself on an electric piano and fumbles with a megaphone. The subtitle of the piece »music for K. C.« - makes reference to the chosen text, which consists of freely combined fragments from an interview with Kurt Cobain, one-time front man of the grunge band Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994.
As for their sonic qualities,the pieces of the series schöner leben emphatically deny that which Peter Ablinger once called the »integrity of outer appearances.« Martin Schüttler refuses to demonstrate craftsmanship and instead counts on the immediacy of simple, profane, and occasionally clichéd materials. Onesuch »trivial« material also forms the basis of Schüttlers composition schöner leben 5 (2007), which bears a quote from Martin Kippenberger as its subtitle: »Nix verstehen ist besser als gar nichts (Understanding zilch is better than nothing)«. Schüttler identifies the work as a »study on the by-products of media«. The viola part and the accompanying recorded material are derived from MIDI files of mobile phone ringtones which are themselves based on mainstream pop standards. The individual tracks of the files are separated and individually fragmented; an additional degree of alienation is attained through preparations of the viola as well as an extremely slow tempo.
Michael Maierhof is similarly concerned with »keeping the composer anchored in reality.« In his music he attempts to distance himself from the »self-imposed rules« mentality into which contemporary music has increasingly withdrawn. Instead he re-defines the task of the composer as one of exploring acoustic experiences within an aesthetic framework, while simultaneously developing the formal processes appropriate to such a »transference«. Thus Maierhof´s conception calls for a drastic expansion of the material disposition of contemporary music. It doesnt matter »whether the composer borrows his material from canonical sources, or whether he is dealing with pop music or even the acoustic protocol of a refrigerator springing to life.« Despite this fealty to everyday reality, however, Maierhof in no sense intends his music as a mere illustration, in the sense of »transplantation« of day-to-day sounds onto the concert stage. Rather, the analysis of these particular sound qualities is only a point of departure for an explicitly musical approach.
In splitting 15 Maierhof focusses on the complex internal structures of one everyday sound and one instrumental sound; the sounds of a bottle-filling machine are confronted by the sub-tone sounds of a prepared viola. Maierhof avoids bringing these sounds into dialogue, however: any sense of interaction, in the sense of a gradual transformation from one sonic state to another, is strictly excluded. The sounds thus attain the status of objects, whose individuality is presented without mediation - instead of narrative structures Maierhof relies on a discontinuous, silence-ridden exposition: »In this framework the sounds refer back to themselves and thus draw attention to their own complexity.«
In daily songs 2 it is everyday objects that are themselves transformed into sound producers and filters. The singer works with a kind of »analog Vocoder« in the form of a plastic cup filled with glass marbles, which modifies the sound of the voice to varying degrees - from mild interference effects to maximal sympathetic resonance. The grand piano is also played with a peculiar kind of resonator: the lowest string is equipped with a nylon string extension, which itself is attached to a plastic cup; this preparation is then
made to resonate using a moist sponge. Instead of the isolated demonstration of a sound, as in splitting 15, Maierhof here deals with the complexity of combined sound objects, but without giving up the sense of concentration upon a reduced material.
Similarly, for Maximilian Marcoll, the principal appeal of composition is the opportunity it provides to communicate with his acoustic surroundings and to incorporate everyday noises into the artwork. That a composer can offer new aesthetic concepts for experiencing everyday reality seems to perpetually be regarded as a deviant notion. Marcoll, however, regards precisely this deficit as a challenge, which brings with it a new - or more precisely, a less mystical - conception of the activity of »composition«. Composition is - just like any other form of artistic production - primarily a type of labor, and is only rarely characterized by moments of brilliant inspiration.
In his work Samstag Morgen - Berlin Neukölln. Studie. Und Selbstportrait. Mit Hirsch. (2007), the point of departure is a recording from the courtyard of his apartment building. Birds are heard chirping - albeit not as a chorus in the classic sense; more as isolated sounds. The recording was then digitally manipulated: the sounds were dissolved from their background, the ambient noise eradicated, the focus sharpened. The suppressed environmental sounds are replaced by another layer: a recording of the composer in his studio, at work on the piece itself. This recording grounds the entire course of the piece; it forms a basis for everything else that takes place. On this foundation the two sound-producers assume their positions: the playback with manipulated bird recordings as well as a piano, which plays transcriptions of this material.
Maximilian Marcoll´s piece takes the difference between original and transcription, between an object and its imitation, as its theme. Although bird voices, i.e., »nature sounds« are the point of departure for the piece, the actual material of the piece is only attained through what Marcoll calls »artification« - in this case through electronic defamiliarization. Conversely, the piano sound undergoes no such process, yet it plays nothing more than transcriptions of the bird artifacts. The resulting music demonstrates the crosscutting, similarity, and interchangeability of its component parts, and on no level distinguishes between noble and ignoble, essential and expendable materials.
»Aesthetic empiricism«, the presentation of an object for the sake of creating an experience. This is an apt, if pointed, description of the intent of Hannes Seidl´s compositional work. He contemplates the function of music and the way in which it is perceived, coining the term »strategies against hearing« to describe his purposeful disruptions of an effortless, incidental perception, which in its manner of operation absorbs music as a commodity. In Seidl´s interpretation, functional music is not so much a genre as a kind of listening - the perception of music as a stimulus, a soundtrack, the perfunctory accompaniment for particular situations, which flattens complex sonic events into a comfortable, comprehensible structure. For Seidl, finding »strategies against listening« means developing methods, through which art music engages critically with functional music.
Seidl describes the composition Box (2008) as a superimposition on the composition Gegenkontrolle (2004), for four-channel electronics and percussion. The older piece takes the notion of »letting fall«, which is suggested by music as a consumer product, as its theme: Seidl claims that »the employment of functional music is intended to bring about a trance-like state. It invites us to let ourselves fall; the room is inundated with sound, becomes transformed, consecrated.« In Gegenkontrolle, a much more literal meaning of the term »letting fall« is juxtaposed: objects are noisily dropped to the floor, an action in which Seidl identifies a »real-izing effect« in relation to the spaces in which the actions take place. In opposition to the previously described »consecration«, the space is instead profaned and its real acoustic characteristics are showcased.
In Box, an additional layer is superimposed upon the space established in Gegenkontrolle. »The formless sound of the falling object,« Seidl says, »stands in opposition to the sustained tones of the viola and countertenor. Also, these various layers correlate with different spaces: the various reverb levels of the electronics, the very close sounds of tongue clicks, a little further away the sustained sounds of viola and countertenor, and finally the noise-maker who performs his part in an »adjoining room.« These spaces are in turn mixed with the environment wherein the recording is presented. The ambient sound does not disrupt the piece, but rather constitutes a further layer of it.
text: Michael Rebhahn
translation: Philipp Blume
artist: stock11.de / berweck / gloger / maierhof / marcoll / rona / schüttler / seidl
titel: VA 2009 (compilation)
tracklist:
1. Martin Schüttler »schöner leben 1 (music for K. C.)«
für Countertenor mit E-Piano, Megaphon, Verstärkungen, Zuspielungen, Maske & Pistole (2008)
Daniel Gloger: Countertenor
10:32 min
2. Michael Maierhof »splitting 15«
für Viola und Zuspielung (2006)
Jessica Rona: Viola
11:25 min
3. Maximilian Marcoll »Samstag Morgen - Berlin Neukölln. Studie. Und Selbstportrait. Mit Hirsch.«
für Klavier und Zuspielungen (2007)
Sebastian Berweck: Klavier, Zuspielungen
12:26 min
4. Martin Schüttler »schöner leben 5 (>Nix verstehen ist besser als gar nichts.< - M.K.)«
für präparierte Viola mit Verstärkungen und Zuspielung (2007/2008)
Jessica Rona: Viola
8:42 min
5. Michael Maierhof »daily songs 2«
für Stimme, Flügel und mitschwingende Systeme (2008)
Daniel Gloger: Countertenor
Sebastian Berweck: Flügel
7:31 min
6. Hannes Seidl »Box«
für Viola, Countertenor, Geräuschemacher und Elektronik (2008)
Jessica Rona: Viola
Daniel Gloger: Countertenor
Sebastian Berweck: Geräuschemacher
14:38 min
artist info: 
A work unfettered by compromise or concession - Martin Schüttler sees these as the ideal prerequisites for his compositional activity and thus criticizes the kind of extrinsic determination that is increasingly being regarded as unavoidable. The autonomy of the aesthetic process is subjugated to pragmatic stipulations: who will be the interpreters? Where will the performance take place? What is expected? - in the end, the composer finds himself in a web of demands and conventions that, to a considerable degree, marginalize the fact that his artistic activity is intended to do more than merely satisfy a service industry. His cycle schöner leben, which has occupied him since 2004, is intended as a counter-model which emphasizes the self-determination of the composer: »The pieces come about because I want to write them, and because they appeal to performers whose work I value and with whom I wish to collaborate.«
Thus schöner leben 1 is a musical scene for a countertenor, whom Schüttler has imbued with the aura of a droll cabaret-style entertainer. He accompanies himself on an electric piano and fumbles with a megaphone. The subtitle of the piece »music for K. C.« - makes reference to the chosen text, which consists of freely combined fragments from an interview with Kurt Cobain, one-time front man of the grunge band Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994.