The Lachenmann Lacuna

[blablawsky]

Based on the description of the video of 'Marche Fatale' it seems like the work was composed as a sort of anniversary gift to Stuttgart State Orchestra. So I don't expect this piece to represent a new 'direction' for him. Hopefully he will return to composing more soon (a new string quartet would be great)!

[Mandryka]

So I don't expect this piece to represent a new 'direction' for him.

It certainly would be extraordinary if it did.

[Joaquimhock]

Based on the description of the video of 'Marche Fatale' it seems like the work was composed as a sort of anniversary gift to Stuttgart State Orchestra. So I don't expect this piece to represent a new 'direction' for him. Hopefully he will return to composing more soon (a new string quartet would be great)!

His long-awaited new work for 8 horns and orchestra is planned for June it seems: https://www.br-so.com/peter-eotvos-08-06-2018/k8002/

[Mandryka]

His long-awaited new work for 8 horns and orchestra is planned for June it seems: https://www.br-so.com/peter-eotvos-08-06-2018/k8002/

OMG as soon as I read that all that I could think of was Richard Strauss's Concertstück for four horns and orchestra.

Kill me now.

[Joaquimhock]

OMG as soon as I read that all that I could think of was Richard Strauss's Concertstück for four horns and orchestra.

Kill me now.

The last part of Grisey's Les espaces acoustiques is also written for four hors and orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BQQQ2bu3GM

PS The Koncertstücke for 4 hors is by Schumann if I remember well... is there something like that by Strauss...?

[Mandryka]

The last part of Grisey's Les espaces acoustiques is also written for four hors and orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BQQQ2bu3GM

PS The Koncertstücke for 4 hors is by Schumann if I remember well... is there something like that by Strauss...?

Schumann, that's right, I think I was confusing it with Strauss because I listened to the moonlight music from Capriccio a few weeks ago, which has a  prominent horn part. I'd completely forgotten the Grisey!

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Wtf am I listening to.

Is this like some really really early work he decided to orchestrate or something like that for a bit of fun? Not quite sure where this is coming from in terms of his output leading here. A bit of fluff, some fun fluff for the first minute until it feels very tedious, but there is so so much of this in existence already mightn't it be nice to listen to Lachenmann (if that is what we want to hear) instead of this?

[bhodges]

The march was originally for piano, from 2016, and I haven't been able to find out much about why he wrote it. Nor have I been able to find out about the orchestrated version! (Some friends on Facebook may be of help.)

I suspect it's a one-off -- a stunt he may have thought would amuse the orchestra. It does show off his formidable orchestration talents, which some people listening to his other works might not fully appreciate. And for sure, when I want to listen to Lachenmann, this is not the piece I would turn to!

--Bruce

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

The march was originally for piano, from 2016, and I haven't been able to find out much about why he wrote it. Nor have I been able to find out about the orchestrated version! (Some friends on Facebook may be of help.)

I suspect it's a one-off -- a stunt he may have thought would amuse the orchestra. It does show off his formidable orchestration talents, which some people listening to his other works might not fully appreciate. And for sure, when I want to listen to Lachenmann, this is not the piece I would turn to!

--Bruce

I think pretty much any other work he wrote shows his formidable orchestration talents anyway......... even the solo stuff. Not many composers really go to such great lengths to explore the possibilities of sound production on acoustic instruments the way Lachenmann does. Not entirely sure if this piece is really showing that as much.

[bhodges]

I think pretty much any other work he wrote shows his formidable orchestration talents anyway......... even the solo stuff. Not many composers really go to such great lengths to explore the possibilities of sound production on acoustic instruments the way Lachenmann does. Not entirely sure if this piece is really showing that as much.

Yes, true (about his other work). This may be nothing more than an elaborate joke, but I'm genuinely curious to know how this piece came about. If I find out anything I'll post something here.

--Bruce

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

 from Van Magazine

[blablawsky]

Are there other composers or non-classical musicians similar to Lachenmann, other than the ones previously mentioned (Salvatore Sciarrino, Mark Andre, Pierluigi Billone)? Preferably someone with more violent and/or sordid inclinations (Lachenmann's works feel very pretty to me), and more interest in time? I'm aware of noise musicians like Grunt, Operation Cleansweep, etc. but they are usually not as elaborate with their works as I'd like. I like Gran Torso and Reigen Seliger Geister most.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Are there other composers or non-classical musicians similar to Lachenmann, other than the ones previously mentioned (Salvatore Sciarrino, Mark Andre, Pierluigi Billone)? Preferably someone with more violent and/or sordid inclinations (Lachenmann's works feel very pretty to me), and more interest in time? I'm aware of noise musicians like Grunt, Operation Cleansweep, etc. but they are usually not as elaborate with their works as I'd like. I like Gran Torso and Reigen Seliger Geister most.

Gee I dunno. Lachenmann really has an interest in sounds which he makes extremely beautiful and pretty, as you say, and I think that may come across because of his skill in really REALLY understanding the acoustics of each instrument he works with and how a very wide variety of sounds work together. When I think 'violent' inclinations I imagine that might mean you are interested in music which may use many extended techniques, but in such a way where the sounds are less clear? More forced? Something like that anyway? With interest in time are you talking about someone who uses rhythm and meter in a more structural way like Birtwistle, Carter etc?

If Alien was around more often I imagine he might be able to help you out more.

Have you explored much electroacoustic stuff?

[pjme]

I wasn't able to access Jessop's link to VAN - I copied the text.

From https://van-us.atavist.com/marche-fatale:

Online, the reaction to Lachenmann's piece can be summed up briefly: "What?!?" He is, particularly to U.S.-based avant-garde composers struggling against the tide of bland post-minimalism, something of an icon: hence the red t-shirts of Lachenmann as Che Guevara, and the Helmut Hard Core Total Devotion Group on Facebook. It's not necessarily that his fans sensed betrayal; more that they felt they needed to know the reason behind the "Marche fatale"—because with Lachenmann there is always a reason. But this time, there was no guessing what that might be.
I asked Lachenmann how people had reacted to "Marche fatale" after the premiere:
I don't know if that's really important. Besides, who is "people"? My kids, my accountant, my doctor, the person in the audience sitting next to me? Of course I experience a lot of pleasantries that vary in honesty....But I'm glad that the orchestra enjoyed playing it and did so with so much verve. Who says to a composer that the music disappointed, confused, or repelled him?
"Marche fatale" is shocking in the opposite way. "It's an imprudent, daring escapade, it might confuse my listeners more than my earlier pieces—which themselves caused scandals at their premieres before being accepted," Lachenmann wrote in his program note to "Marche fatale." The musical language is unfamiliar in Lachenmann's oeuvre, but the sensation of being completely unmoored is not.
Lachenmann's work has always been deeply concerned with the implications of music history. While his "Accanto" for clarinet, orchestra and tape refers to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with "veneration and anguished love," he situates the "Marche fatale" within a kind of alternative Canon of the Banal: Mozart's "A Musical Joke," Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 119, Kagel's "10 Märsche um den Sieg zu verfehlen," Ligeti's "Hungarian Rock," and Stravinsky's "Circus Polka," which transfigures a Schubert military march for piano four hands. But Lachenmann is obsessed with history—it would never occur to him to do a piece, even a bitterly satirical one like the "Marche fatale," badly. When I asked him if his tonal writing had gotten rusty with years of molecular-level focus on instrument timbre, he answered:

You aren't familiar with my "Sakura Variations" in C Minor or my "Variations on a Schubert Waltz" in C-sharp Minor. A composer who doesn't search for his own path through historical composition, music theory, and instrumentation practice is a dilettante. He should just give up.

As he points out, the "Marche fatale" is more of a typical Lachenmann work than it might seem at first listen in this sense too. The "Schubert Variations" use more atonal—in this context, more familiar—sonorities, but share an interest in deconstructing gesture with the "Marche fatale." For example, the "Schubert Variations" take an accented, accompanying right-hand motive and exaggerate them, in Variation II and later, into something more decisive, martial and therefore perverse. In "Marche fatale," the absurdity and "banality" of marching music comes into focus as well. "Is a march, with its forcing of the collective into a martial or celebratory mood, a priori ridiculous?" asks Lachenmann. "Is it even 'music?' Can one march and listen at the same time?" Whether his pieces are gorgeously noisy or gratingly tonal, Lachenmann wants to ask serious questions with them.
I laughed at moments in "Marche fatale," and funny art can doubtlessly pose deep questions about the human condition. But in the work, Lachenmann makes a distinction between humor and what he calls Heiterkeit—cheerfulness or, better, liveliness. Humor and liveliness have little to do with one another, he writes. The distinction lies in a kind of latent danger that the German word connotes: "At some point I decided to take 'ridiculousness' as the revealing characteristic of our civilization, as it sits at the edge of the abyss, seriously—perhaps even with bitter seriousness. The unstoppable journey to the black hole, its crippling evil: 'Things are bound to get lively,'" Lachenmann writes.
He added in his email to me:
Daily life is full of pettiness. Humor, God knows, can help with that—maybe it's even essential. In music, and while composing, I care as little about [humor] as a cook would care about it while he's making his food or a surgeon while he's operating on a patient. Which doesn't mean that I didn't have to laugh sometimes—not just in rehearsal—at the mischief I made. But I can't help someone who can't distinguish between humor and liveliness in any case. Politicians like to say that "the situation is serious, but not hopeless." Not I—a composer should refrain from speaking—but my "Marche" says: "The situation is hopeless, but not serious."

This is the decisive characteristic that makes the "Marche fatale" a typical Lachenmann piece below the sonic surface. Maybe even an archetypical piece. Listen to it again: Doesn't it start to sound less funny and more apocalyptic? Instead of a march up the mountain, a march down to hell? "How could this happen?" Lachenmann asks in his program note, with "this" meaning the piece itself. It could happen because even a tonal march can be suffused with the irreducible elements of Lachenmann's style: knowledge, care, irony, bitterness, and fear for the future.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Oh yeah I just posted the meme because it was funny that is all. But thanks for the following post anyway!!!!

[blablawsky]

Gee I dunno. Lachenmann really has an interest in sounds which he makes extremely beautiful and pretty, as you say, and I think that may come across because of his skill in really REALLY understanding the acoustics of each instrument he works with and how a very wide variety of sounds work together. When I think 'violent' inclinations I imagine that might mean you are interested in music which may use many extended techniques, but in such a way where the sounds are less clear? More forced? Something like that anyway? With interest in time are you talking about someone who uses rhythm and meter in a more structural way like Birtwistle, Carter etc?

If Alien was around more often I imagine he might be able to help you out more.

Have you explored much electroacoustic stuff?

By violent inclinations, I mean someone who is attracted to sounds that evoke violence when you listen to them. My focus is on what I hear, and not the attitudes of the performers. In my view, the term 'violence' is different from 'aggression' in that violence has macabre connotations, and does not necessarily exclude subdued aspects, while aggression is mainly physical.

Lachenmann's works can be aggressive, but I don't feel that they are twisted. They are appealing in a traditional way. As much as I enjoy them, I am also interested in hearing something that's as precise in expression as Lachenmann's works, but violent (for example, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and String Trio can be violent) and/or sordid (like Bussotti's RARA for cello). Here I don't mean sordid in a derogatory way.

I had Carter in mind for time. I would've loved to hear Carter use extended techniques as Lachenmann does. I guess Ferneyhough could somewhat fit the bill but he does his own thing.

What electroacoustic works should I listen to?

Also, in response to pjme's post regarding Marche fatale, all the extramusical narration is interesting, but what I actually hear from the work is sadly just not that appealing. Only what I hear is what matters to me as a listener. A lot of 'academic' composers get too focused on such extramusical embellishment of their compositions, but all of my favorite works require only what can be heard, and myself. I didn't expect Lachenmann to do this, since he is usually so focused on what is audible. I still look forward to his upcoming composition.

[pjme]

  Could not resist this....

https://www.youtube.com/v/aco12S3wjig

P.

[Mandryka]

By violent inclinations, I mean someone who is attracted to sounds that evoke violence when you listen to them. My focus is on what I hear, and not the attitudes of the performers. In my view, the term 'violence' is different from 'aggression' in that violence has macabre connotations, and does not necessarily exclude subdued aspects, while aggression is mainly physical.

Lachenmann's works can be aggressive, but I don't feel that they are twisted. They are appealing in a traditional way. As much as I enjoy them, I am also interested in hearing something that's as precise in expression as Lachenmann's works, but violent (for example, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and String Trio can be violent) and/or sordid (like Bussotti's RARA for cello). Here I don't mean sordid in a derogatory way.

I had Carter in mind for time. I would've loved to hear Carter use extended techniques as Lachenmann does. I guess Ferneyhough could somewhat fit the bill but he does his own thing.

What electroacoustic works should I listen to?

Also, in response to pjme's post regarding Marche fatale, all the extramusical narration is interesting, but what I actually hear from the work is sadly just not that appealing. Only what I hear is what matters to me as a listener. A lot of 'academic' composers get too focused on such extramusical embellishment of their compositions, but all of my favorite works require only what can be heard, and myself. I didn't expect Lachenmann to do this, since he is usually so focused on what is audible. I still look forward to his upcoming composition.

Have you explored Hespos? Or early Nono, like recorda cosa ti hanno fatto in auschwitz?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

By violent inclinations, I mean someone who is attracted to sounds that evoke violence when you listen to them. My focus is on what I hear, and not the attitudes of the performers. In my view, the term 'violence' is different from 'aggression' in that violence has macabre connotations, and does not necessarily exclude subdued aspects, while aggression is mainly physical.

Lachenmann's works can be aggressive, but I don't feel that they are twisted. They are appealing in a traditional way. As much as I enjoy them, I am also interested in hearing something that's as precise in expression as Lachenmann's works, but violent (for example, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and String Trio can be violent) and/or sordid (like Bussotti's RARA for cello). Here I don't mean sordid in a derogatory way.

I had Carter in mind for time. I would've loved to hear Carter use extended techniques as Lachenmann does. I guess Ferneyhough could somewhat fit the bill but he does his own thing.

What electroacoustic works should I listen to?

Also, in response to pjme's post regarding Marche fatale, all the extramusical narration is interesting, but what I actually hear from the work is sadly just not that appealing. Only what I hear is what matters to me as a listener. A lot of 'academic' composers get too focused on such extramusical embellishment of their compositions, but all of my favorite works require only what can be heard, and myself. I didn't expect Lachenmann to do this, since he is usually so focused on what is audible. I still look forward to his upcoming composition.

Defying expectations was probably what is most appealing about March Fatale anyway.

One of my favourite electroacoustic works is 'Red Bird' by Trevor Wishart, which, I have to say, does have its own extramusical discussion as well. But do give it a listen if you haven't already.

https://www.youtube.com/v/lekLl7o8yrc

[blablawsky]

Defying expectations was probably what is most appealing about March Fatale anyway.

One of my favourite electroacoustic works is 'Red Bird' by Trevor Wishart, which, I have to say, does have its own extramusical discussion as well. But do give it a listen if you haven't already.

https://www.youtube.com/v/lekLl7o8yrc

This is very cool. Thanks!

Mandryka, I find early Nono very appealing. Hespos is cool as well. Thanks for introducing me to him.