Georg Friedrich Haas (1953 – )

[Rinaldo]

Wilkommen! Let me begin by stating the objective truth: this is f*cking amazing!!!

https://www.youtube.com/v/BoqvGLdjUhE

Reminds me of Grisey at certain points, when the orchestra 'shines' through, but boy what texture, what power!

Here's some additional reading if you're not satisfied with my scientific findings:

The twelfth-tone interval is so small that it is no longer heard as an interval, but rather as the shading of a single note. A single tone played by a romantic orchestra has a wider frequency.  The aural effect of a scale in twelfth-tone intervals is thus similar to a glissando. The effect of a cluster of twelfth-tones depends on the register: higher up, it is sharp, abrasive, biting, lower down it is soft, melting, rich. Of course it is also possible to build raw, dissonant chords with twelve-tone intervals – much more differentiated (also in the degree of acuteness) than with the traditional 12 tones per octave. But it is also possible to build much more "consonant" chords then in the traditional twelve-note scale: a close approximation of the twelve-tone scale can be produced in the overtone scale, accurate up to a twelfth of a tone.

Any Haas fans out there? After in vain and now this, I'm becoming one.

[San Antone]

Yep - G.F. Haas is one of the best (IMO) of this generation.  Here's a YouTube playlist with 20 videos of his music:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7gMMkgoMwZLB96KedyKC4MNeDrBB3Ian

[CRCulver]

Funny, I've been listening to precisely Limited Approximations myself lately and was thinking to come on here and urge everyone to track down the Neos box set with this and a boatload of other worthy new pieces. Haas was deeply inspired by Wyschnegradsky's microtonal piano writing, and hearing the Wyschegradsky pieces alongside the Haas in that box set has only deepened my appreciation of both composers.

But all of Haas's CDs on Neos and Kairos are, I daresay, essential purchases for any fan of contemporary music. I would also strongly encourage people to avoid YouTube for this repertoire. Not only is it compressed to hell, but the two record companies that are championing Haas are facing a difficult financial outlook and could use your support.

What I like about Haas is his ability to make the ensemble sound like a single mighty organism, ever-growing. He's like Radulescu but with a clearer form, one that can also deeply move lovers of more traditional repertoire.

[not edward]

I've been a Haas admirer since the first Kairos disc of him came out in the '90s: I see him as someone who's managed to create a style that leads on from both Grisey and Ligeti. He may not be as radical as those two, but I think there's plenty potential in the area he has chosen to occupy.

Particular favourites of mine would include in vain (of course), limited approximations, the percussion concerto Wer, wen ich schriee, hörte mich and perhaps my favourite, the orchestral Natures mortes. Some of these works seem very claustrophobic and gloomy in tone (if I remember rightly, Haas has mentioned as an influence on his style the fact that he grew up in an Alpine village where in the winter you almost never saw the sun as it was blotted out by the mountains).

[snyprrr]

String Quartets 1-2 (Kairos Quartett;edition zeitklang 2004)

With CD in hand, I recall a very slow moving, glissandi laden sci-fi music that was quite spare. The two SQs each have a process by which it unfolds, and they are a bit 'different', but I'd have to get to it just a little later. It's certainly Arditti fare, as I was tracking down their Premieres. I don't know if it's fair to compare this to the Arditti's Eberhard Grosskopf disc on Neos, but I like EG's take on the whole "area of interest"- which I'd like to umbrella under the Quiet Maximalists (including Feldman, et al). This is music you can chill out to- it's Process- without any violent outbursts (which I think is always important to point out for those simply looking for meditative purposes). There's quiet music with outbursts, and there's quiet music without

Enthusiastically Recommended

[CRCulver]

This is music you can chill out to- it's Process- without any violent outbursts (which I think is always important to point out for those simply looking for meditative purposes). There's quiet music with outbursts, and there's quiet music without

While those two quartets may be uniformly quiet, Haas is certainly capable of violent outbursts. There is one in "...Einklang freier Wesen..." that never fails to make me jump when I'm listening to the piece half-attentively, even though I've know the work for years already.

[Rinaldo]

Looks like Haas is quite appreciated here, good! I've got lots of catching up to do.

I like the fact that while he's very uncompromising, the result is still immediately approachable, which is the same experience I've had with Grisey - everything sounds so new but it clicks right away.

[7/4]

same here.

[snyprrr]

Looks like Haas is quite appreciated here, good! I've got lots of catching up to do.

I like the fact that while he's very uncompromising, the result is still immediately approachable, which is the same experience I've had with Grisey - everything sounds so new but it clicks right away.

Now how can anything be uncompromising and approachable at the same time? That's outrageous!

[snyprrr]

String Quartets 1-2 (Kairos Quartett;edition zeitklang 2004)

With CD in hand, I recall a very slow moving, glissandi laden sci-fi music that was quite spare. The two SQs each have a process by which it unfolds, and they are a bit 'different', but I'd have to get to it just a little later. It's certainly Arditti fare, as I was tracking down their Premieres. I don't know if it's fair to compare this to the Arditti's Eberhard Grosskopf disc on Neos, but I like EG's take on the whole "area of interest"- which I'd like to umbrella under the Quiet Maximalists (including Feldman, et al). This is music you can chill out to- it's Process- without any violent outbursts (which I think is always important to point out for those simply looking for meditative purposes). There's quiet music with outbursts, and there's quiet music without

Enthusiastically Recommended

Listen to these last night. No.1 is 30  minutes of what I'd call microtonal '70s Penderecki with some Feldmanesque dynamics. There is some "accumulation" which leads to some thick tuttis (still not shockingly loud), but overall there is a 'medium'ishness to the whole thing, somewhat amorphous, yet everything part of the process. No.2 seemed quieter, but my attention was drifting... zzzZZZzz... oh, I mean, yes,... uh...

There were not as I remembered from a couple of years ago. Huh, well, I guess I'll give them another try shortly. It's definitely assembled in the same detached Feldman lab as a lot of this kind of stuff is.

I'm going to knock it down to RECOMMENDED. I'd rather go for Holliger, Lachenmann, or Sciarrino before more Haas, perhaps.

[Rinaldo]

https://www.youtube.com/v/_KHuAzKzuTU

[not edward]

Haas's new work I can't breathe can be streamed from the Koln Philharmonie site for a limited time: http://www.philharmonie.tv/veranstaltung/12/

[snyprrr]

Haas's new work I can't breathe can be streamed from the Koln Philharmonie site for a limited time: http://www.philharmonie.tv/veranstaltung/12/

Please.don't.tell.me.it's.inspired.by."I can't breathe"... oy vey, please...

[Rinaldo]

Please.don't.tell.me.it's.inspired.by."I can't breathe"... oy vey, please...

Don't hold your breath.

"I give no sound to the perpetrators."

[snyprrr]

Don't hold your breath.

"I give no sound to the perpetrators."

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


I do NOT want my Avant Garde reminding me of Coney Island. >:Dhsssss

Really? Out of all the things that happened last year, this is the one that touched our poor German's heart? Not the white phospherus(?) used in Gaza? German guy?? Not the dismantling of your society? No? Why didn't you just go Full Lib and call it 'Bell Up, Don't Toot'

ACK,now I feel like I know more than i want to about dear Mr. Haas. White Guilt Avant Garde... oy, he might as well be Swedish.


gag- I think I'm going to....


This is why I "hate" my love. Every time I turn around, another cool ass bloke/sheila turns out to be just another weenie whiner guilty guilty lib tard with some "social conscience" issue- just like how beauty contestants must want "world peace". Great, so now Haas is a "useful idiot"? Great, destroy the German people further. Gaaah, how about a little REVISION there, Georgy Boy???

Seriously, Composers must not be saying anything important these days, for none of them are being Disappeared, or having Car Accidents, or having perfectly healthy Heart Attacks,... nope, it seems the whole lock, stock, and barrel of Modern Composers are in the Globalist Pocket, just lap dogs of the Socialist Regime known as Western Civ.

gag me with a spoon


TRAITOR!!!!




Maybe Composer should stop listening to the sound of their belly buttons growing microtonally, and start writing some BITING SOCIAL ORATORIO??? maybe to do with the Banqsters? No? ooops, they must be the protected class.... oy vey indeed.


RANT: end

really, I'd like to write him  aletter




as if Eric Garner is the voice of the trumpet.... I mean, shouldn't it have been a tuba??? seriously.... guy selling loose cigs is now an avant icon? is it 1986 all over again?

[ibanezmonster]

Yep - G.F. Haas is one of the best (IMO) of this generation.

Indeed.

[not edward]

Indeed.

Have to second/third this one. I've been revisiting some of his music over the last month for the first time in a few years, and I've found that's often when you really know if it's the real deal. Not everything has stood up so well, but I'm finding a list of pieces that emphatically do: the violin concerto and the solo violin piece De terrae fine; the percussion concerto Wer, wen ich schriee, horte mich; the almost Bergian cello concerto; the "concerto for light and orchestra", Hyperion (would love to see it in concert) and of course, Limited approximations and in vain. I need to revisit the quartets (there's eight of them, now) and have yet to explore any of his operas.

It strikes me that one of the key elements in many of these pieces is a kind of parallel to Webern's description of sonata form as a contrast between strict and free; except here we have a contrast (often, particularly in works from around 2000, closer to a battle) between comparatively conventional harmonies and pure microtonal writing.

[Rinaldo]

Just listened to the percussion concerto. The metallic pulses remind me of the sphere from Contact starting up. And I mean that as a compliment.

https://www.youtube.com/v/m0_C1O_WEhE

Oh, to hear this stuff live.. I still kick myself for missing a performance of in vain few years ago.

[not edward]

Oh, to hear this stuff live.. I still kick myself for missing a performance of in vain few years ago.

I've missed two! Once out of the country visiting family, once out of town courtesy of work. If it had been one of the more impractical pieces, like Hyperion or Limited approximations, work would have had to go shove it... at least I'll probably have another chance to hear in vain live (particularly now Haas is North America-based).

It's a shame that there's so few commercial recordings of his work. YouTube is the way to go for most pieces.

[amw]

Well, I listened to in vain. Not so impressed. It seems like a Grisey cover of Ligeti's Melodien dragged out for about fifty minutes longer. (Listened on CD so didn't have the benefit of the lighting changes, so I just flicked the lights on or off whenever it seemed suitably atmospheric to do so.) Any emotional impact it might have had was somewhat blunted by constant reminders of two other big cycles that hit most of the same notes while also having a lot more variety and being a lot more effective, Les Espaces Acoustiques and Quatre chants, plus flickers of Ligeti (Melodien, Chamber Concerto, Clocks & Clouds), flashbacks to Stimmung and (whenever the horns come in) flashforwards to the Hamburg Concerto. Basically sounded like an amalgamation of lots of good pieces without ever developing an identity of its own.

I did like the ending though, it was clever.

(I do like Limited Approximations, but it kind of betrays how far behind the curve the conventional concert hall is—yes, it's certainly a new idea to give to some pianos and violins and whatever, but people were doing similar things in electronic music [and Harry Partch was building 43-tone instruments] before Haas was born. It's not so much that Haas is doing it late, it's just that there's hardly any urgency or vitality or sense of inner necessity in his music; it doesn't feel like he's writing to express things that would otherwise be inexpressible.)