My largesse I had mentioned before paid off: I now have the WERGO musica viva PAL DVD Furcht und Verlangen, a documentary with some of the composer's works and a discussion between him and the conductor of Klangforum Heidelberg, Walter Nußbaum.
I don't claim to understand that man's work, but I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It helps how he and the conductor talk about the performances, Lachenmann explaining what he 'hears', how he tries to put the 'sound' - Klang - on paper for the musicians to play and the speaker to 'say'. Fascinating his ...zwei Gefühle with the composer as the speaker. The other two presentations, Consolation I and II are so far out of reach for me, can't even touch them, but his Mouvement almost makes sense. Why? Because I have heard this kind of 'music' before!
I think it was in 1981 when Claude Vivier composed Marco Polo which OpusArte produced on DVD and I was fascinated by the innovative sounds Vivier produced by using the traditional musical instruments in different maneuvers, like rasping the violin bow across the head of the instrument, or speaking into the giant gong. Yes, there are sounds emerging. And today I listened to and watched Lachenmann's work and see it as an extension of what Vivier did many years ago. Unfortunately Vivier was killed in 1983 and his composing brought to a tragic halt. I am not familiar with Lachenmann's composing history, maybe be had the ideas before Vivier, or simultaneous; whatever, it's a great new idea to make one truly listen to Klang! May Lachenmann live many more productive years - and may I live long enough to eventually sing his praises as I do now about Richard Wagner!