Yes, it's true, HH is becoming one of my favo(rite) (de)Composers. The Most Famous Oboist in Historrry is also a profoundly disturbing Avant Garde Composer, whose claim to fame is writing such pieces as to inflict harm upon the executants, haha!
HH's earliest works (early '60s), some of which are on the ECM disc,
Leider ohne Worde, begin in the blackest depths of the post-BAZimmermann/WW2/ExpressionistSerialist Germany (oy!). I have a feeling many of you have this disc.
By the mid-'60s, represented by a DG disc of
Der Magische Tanzer/Seibengesang (both for everything-plus-kitchensink), he has, apparently (haven't heard them yet), stretched the front flank as far as was possible at the time. Needless to say, Holliger is one of those ten-pages-of-explanation-per-beat type Composers,... which makes me wonder,... if all other German Composers turn to Holderlin, who is it exactly to whom Stockhausen..., mmm,... nevermind
By the late-'60s, HH hit upon the idea that appears to be his MO (which, I'll be honest, liner notes explain a lot better than I),
the Death of Music.
wow, that's scary!
Anyhow, the pieces during this period (ca. 1967-74), the orchestral
Pneuma and
Atembogen, the choral
Psalm and
Dona Nobis Pacem, HH's own solo oboe piece, and the
String Quartet (1973), HH set about to document the Exhaustion of Expression, for lack of a better term.
The
SQ may be my single most favorite thing not to listen to. One may think it to be a lost Xenakis work from his most fertile period, such is the excruciating level of sonic torture being performed, except that, in HH, the Music actually Dies in a Human way, something generally missing in X's work. The SQ begins with the sounds of snapping, crackling cinders, and ends, 26mins later, with the players and instruments ending up broken and exhausted and unable to continue. Trust me, the more words I use, the worse you'll think it is, so, I'll shut up.
Many Composers had periods of Silence in the '70s, and HH turned to Bec kett, producing the Operas,
Come and Go,
Not I and
What Were. I have not as yet braved this terrain,... brrr, chills just thinking about the pretentiousness!
From the '80s onwards, ECM has been berry berry good to HH, producing most all that he perhaps could wish for, including the
Scardinelli-Zyklus (which I am listening to now, and prompted this Thread), his first "real" Opera,
Schneewittchen (Snow-White), the song cycles
Beisheit(sic)/Alb
Cher(sic), his
Violin Concerto "Hommage a Louis Soutter", and various bits here and there.
There is also a Great
Quintet for Piano and Wind on Philips, wshich plays upon the Mozart template. And, I have read that the Zehetmair Quartet have premiered his
SQ 2, which, hopefully, will make it's way onto cd soon.
I guess I just want to remind everyone of HH's Renaissance Qualities, as fully rounded, perhaps, as opposed to others who maybe get a lot more attention. HH appears to be nobody's fool when it comes to the Impenetrable.
From the Liner Notes (S-Z):
...enigmatic concepts...highly complex, the bewilderingly arcane, the marginal and the fractured...the arcane and the labyrinthine...frozen in a pure ivory tower of congealment...and so on.
Have a Nice Day
