HANNES KERSCHBAUMER schraffur Klangforum Wien Schallfeld Ensemble Arditti Quartet two whiskas ensemble chromoson Krassimir Sterev 1999 20 YEARS 2019 HANNES KERSCHBAUMER (*1981) 1 schraffur 12:39 for quarter-tone accordion and ensemble 2 pedra.debris 12:26 expanded version (2013/15) 3 abbozzo IV 11:55 String Quartet No. 2 (2012) 4 kritzung II 10:50 for prepared violin, three musicians with wooden objects and electronics (2015/18) 5 geschiebe 09:01 for tenor recorder and prepared viola (new version) (2017/18) 6 Ilif 09:48 for five instruments (2018) TT 66:44 2 1 schraffur 2 pedra.debris 3 abbozzo IV Krassimir Sterev, accordion Schallfeld Ensemble Arditti Quartet Klangforum Wien Matej Bunderla, saxophone Irvine Arditti, violin Bernhard Zachhuber, clarinet Maria Flavia Cerrato, piano Ashot Sarkissjan, violin Lorlelei Dowling, bassoon Lorenzo Derinni, violin Ralf Ehlers, viola Gerald Preinfalk, saxophone John Popham, cello Lucas Fels, cello Christoph Walder, horn Margarethe Maierhofer- Anders Nyqvist, trumpet Lischka, double bass Kevin Fairbairn, trombone Leonhard Garms, conductor Joonas Ahonen, piano Björn Wilker, percussion Lukas Schiske, percussion Gunde Jäch-Micko, violin Annette Bik, violin Dimitrios Polisoidis, viola Benedikt Leitner, cello Uli Fussenegger, double bass Emilio Pomàrico, conductor 4 kritzung II 5 geschiebe 6 llif Davide Gagliardi, two whiskas ensemble chromoson sound design and live electronics Ivana Pristašová, viola Philipp Lamprecht, percussion Leonhard Garms, conductor Caroline Mayrhofer, tenor recorder Carolin Ralser, bass flute Valentina Strucelj, bass clarinet Michele Marco Rossi, cello Luca Lavuri, piano 3 On the Music of bow hair and the tensed strings, the Hannes Kerschbaumer instrument beneath nearly burst- ing, and Kerschbaumer’s piece rolls through the hall in an escalating dy- namism like some force of nature. The sonic structure comes to grip one’s entire body as it spreads out: the un- stoppable motion, though it starts out barely audible, can be seen as a steadily growing arm movement and is of an enveloping bodily presence and tangibility, as if we could indeed reach out and touch it. When Georges Didi-Huberman says that “seeing can ultimately be thought and felt only via a touching experience,” 1 then we – in Hannes Kerschbaumer’s kritzung for reference to this experience – can say prepared viola and three stringed in- that here, the touching experience is struments with wooden objects (2015) only felt via hearing. The music gives begins with a nearly inaudible noise as rise to an experience that address- the bow is stroked sideways, ever so es not only our hearing, but also – on lightly but in a concentrated manner, a much more fundamental level – the over the wooden edge of the instru- entire body. And herein lies the unmis- ment’s body. Little by little, the bow takable paradox of Kerschbaumer’s motions become larger and the pres- music: for when we ask ourselves how sure greater, with the strings gradual- that which we call the touching expe- ly engulfed by the radius of the bow as rience is achieved, we have to admit its stimulating reach expands, at first that no actual “touching” takes place; swiping them just in passing, then elic- there’s nothing that we could literal- iting soft vibration, and finally – the ly touch or that could touch us. But it motions grown extravagant, the pres- does seem as if the “authentic” touch- sure massive – ripping them into vio- ing experience were to take place pre- lent motion, with an exchange of great cisely when we just sit still and unaf- physical force between the tensed fected in our chairs. 4 The dimension of corporeality in the there is absolutely nothing to say. And moral and emotional implications, and music of Hannes Kerschbaumer fol- doesn’t the music indeed have the thus also from its “reality”. Torture be- lows from his affectionate attention to right of it? Don’t we already know ev- comes a phenomenon of surfaces and the materiality of his sound sources. In erything that it could say to us? Be- figures, sounds and word-fragments, many of his works, those instruments sides which: the wonderful thing is in which the wounds appear within the of art music that have been refined precisely that the music speaks to us structuring of its surface: they are “cir- over many centuries are joined by without saying anything. cular” – it is about scrapes, cuts, bone “noise-objects” – resonant raw materi- surface, scars, soft tissue, patterns, als that he treats with the same atten- This allows us to view the conventional scratches, tears, pigmentations, de- tion to detail as he does the accordi- romantic motif of the language of the formations, streaks, and outlines. All on or the viola: shards of ceramics and inexpressible in a whole new light. It these are structured surfaces, aes- glass, Styrofoam on Styrofoam, sand- is not just any random feelings, pres- thetic phenomena. It is not about hu- paper on sandpaper, sandpaper on ent to begin with, that are stuffed into man beings – it is about forms, figures, wood. His wooden objects are defined a sonorous costume in order to be un- and patterns. The proximity and intima- precisely in terms of their dimensions packed again by their addressee. In our cy with which Hannes Kerschbaumer’s and the types of wood used (pine, oak, case, the language of the inexpress- music affects us is not a matter of his or balsa), and they are stroked, hit, ible would mean precisely the oppo- coming up to us and informing us, for rubbed, and brushed. They serve as site: that it is simply about the costume, instance, about the horrors of torture meaningless sound-producing bodies about that “purple shimmer of romanti- (about which we already know), nor a that involve certain types of friction cism” (E.T.A. Hoffmann). Kerschbaum- matter of his condemning it morally. On and degrees of sonic density. What in- er’s piece buchstabierend for six male the contrary: he terminates all connec- terests the composer are the sounds voices (2016), for example, begins with tions to ourselves and to our moral and they make. “I just can’t write sequenc- the text of the Istanbul Protocol, the intellectual setting, cutting the leash- es of pitches,” says Kerschbaumer, re- United Nations manual used to inves- es that would tie him to the here and ferring not to any particular technical tigate instances of torture. Its original now, and instead looks at the shapes. deficiency but rather expressing pre- text lists various superficial human in- The human skin is dehumanised; it be- cisely the fact that, behind this music, juries – injuries to the skin – that are in- comes a canvas, as surface for the in- there exists no system or idea that he dicators of tortures having occurred. scription of aesthetic forms. What we seeks to convey to us, to have us un- Using a special combinatorial method, are dealing with here is the paradox of derstand, to communicate; he is con- Kerschbaumer uses this initially tech- music’s proximity being achieved via its cerned simply with the audible sonic nocratic and instructional-seeming distancing. And in this figure of thought, surface itself. And an additional, simi- text to realise an abstract poeticism of we see what Walter Benjamin called an lar paradox reveals itself to us: we are sorts. The way in which torture is dealt artwork’s “aura”—not just as “the ap- being addressed at a juncture where with here is thereby liberated from its pearance or semblance of distance, no 5 matter how close it may be”, but at the This approach also determines Ker- where the accordion is not an accor- same time as the reverse: as the expe- schbaumer’s treatment of the instru- dion. With deep, rhythmic cluster-cas- rience of an all-encompassing proximi- ments. He refrains from taking them cades, expiring keyboard(!) glissandi, ty, as distant as it may be. as what they are. He is much rath- and a high-pitched, circular-seeming er an excessive user of preparation fluttering, the instrument adopts an The torture that buchstabierend deals methods, situating each instrument’s exalted sonority that approaches a with is itself a centuries-old practice specific sonic character someplace kind heard in electronic music. The of this apparently paradoxical figure of where that instrument is not already resonating body of the accordion on- reality. We should not forget here that at home. In kritzung, the sound of the ly surfaces where the instrument ap- torture is a means for the “discovery viola approaches that of the wood- proaches the specific sound of an ac- of truth”. And regardless of however en objects (and vice-versa), while in cordion that has exceeded its sonic tasteless this thought may be, it does picea.debris for two prepared des- abilities – and not where we’re famil- tell us something about that which we cant zithers and prepared bass zith- iar with it, where we know that that’s call truth: the truth gained via torture er (2014), the zither’s sound is purged how an accordion sounds. And pre- is an impossible truth, undermining from the zither, as is the human sound cisely this artificial accordion sound is the concept of truth itself because it from the human voice in buchstabier- more intense and more touching, and is only the imagining of said truth that end. The entire way in which the music in fact more real, than it could ever be actually initiates the process (here, relates to the instruments is thus re- in reality. torture) that brings it forth. But mustn’t versed: the instrument is not simply a we say this of every truth? For it is on- means via which the musical structure How is this possible? It’s only even ly by establishing an impossible, uto- speaks, nor is it a “bearer” of “musical imaginable if we say that there is a level pian image that we set in motion that content”; instead, the instrument itself upon which artificial music is closer to process that rearranges the field of becomes the task at issue.