The title of this series of concerts– »Happy New Ears« – was something John Cage once wished his audience instead of Happy New Year. Cage, along with Luigi Nono, who taught him, and Karlheinz Stockhausen were among those to have influenced Helmut Lachenmann most. He turns 90 on November 27 this year; a chance to honour one of the most important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries with a portrait concert. He's been trying to broaden horizons across the board with his distinct sound world and challenging concepts of art and music for nearly 70 years. »Art is not an expression of what defines time, but what it lacks,« he said and, with Beethoven in mind: »a metamorphosis of magical, familiar experiences triggered by a spiritually charged, creative driving force« - something that fascinates him.
Lachenmann tried to create an alternative world of sound, exploring how sounds emerge from noise, convinced that everything acoustic can be turned into music. Inspired by the ‘musique concrète’ that emerged in the 1950s, which used electronic means to capture everyday sounds and transform them into music, he developed, what he called, ‘musique concrète instrumentale’. Lachenmann doesn't work with electronics, but with instruments used in classic Western music, sometimes enhanced by instruments from other cultures. This resulted in playing techniques being expanded, especially for woodwind and strings, percussion too, for which Lachenmann developed his own notation. His opera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern / The Little Match Girl (1997), staged at Oper Frankfurt in 2015, could be deemed an epochal work.
His Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung) composed in 1983/84, commissioned by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, was performed by the Ensemble Modern at almost the same time as the world premiere. The composer wrote, as a commentary on the work: »music of dying movements, quasi last convulsions, whose pseudo-activity ... attests to the inner torpor preceding the outer one.« Which Lachenmann's friend and fellow composer Wolfgang Rihm called »virtuosity of cancelled virtuosity«. Lachenmann: ‘I thought that this piece, of all pieces, for all my love, regressed to overly familiar music and wanted to withdraw it.’ The Ensemble Modern prevented this, and it's now been performed more than 100 times, worldwide. Reason enough to tackle the work again more than 40 years later.
Helmut Lachenmann (*1935)
Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung) (1983/84)
Enno Poppe, conductor and host
in conversation with Helmut Lachenmann
