On November 23, we will present Lisa Streich’s new piece VOGUE at the WDR Funkhaus. We recorded this conversation with Lisa Streich and Hannah Weirich for our half-year brochure this summer.

HANNAH WEIRICH: DEAR LISA, IT’S SO GREAT THAT YOU’RE WRITING A PIECE FOR US. CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
Lisa Streich: Basically it’s “microtonal pop songs”. That’s what I call them, anyway. They’re simple songs that I write, complete with texts. They’re composed microtonally, arranged for instruments and harmonised.

DID MUSIKFABRIK INSPIRE YOU TO WRITE POP SONGS? WHERE DID YOU GET THAT IDEA FROM? I HAVEN’T HEARD OF YOU DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS BEFORE.
I thought to myself: with Musikfabrik, I can do anything [laughs], and I have the feeling that I know them all at least a little bit, so hopefully I can do a good job of capturing their personalities.

WHAT ARE YOUR SONGS ABOUT?
Everything and nothing…typical pop music subjects. The texts seem to me to have some depth, but they’re very open, and taken from real life, although not my own.
A BOY WHO SINGS
A BOY WHO DREAMS
A BOY WHO DIES
A BOY WHO SELLS
A BOY WHO SPEAKS
A BOY WHO SEES
A TAILLURED MAN
ANOTHER CRA Z Y.

AN EMPTY STOMACH
A HEAV Y HEART
THE PERFECT PAIR
ON THAT SPECIAL DAY
HE KEPT IN HIS HAT
A UNIVERS OF DEMOLITION.

HE’S ASPHALTED BY DESTINY
HE EXHALES LOVE
AND INHALES TAR
WHO IS THIS BOY
WITH SAD CONSONANCES?

HE NOTICED HIS SHADOW
IS GREEN LIKE DISPAIR
GREEN LIKE FEAR
ABYSS AND OBLIVION
GREEN LIKE THE VIOL ATION OF RED
GREEN LIKE THE SL AP AND THE L AST OUTRAGE
GREEN LIKE THE BODY
HANGING ON HIS GALLOWS.

HIS HEART BECAME RED
RED LIKE PRIDE
RED LIKE BLOOD
RED LIKE PAIN AND SHAME
RED LIKE A LOBSTER
BL ACK LIKE A HUMMER
WE LOVE GOOD CONSCIOUS.

MY T WELVE YEAR OLD BOY
WAS NINE TIMES FUCKED
AND RED WAS SUCKING
THEIR APOCALYPSE FINGERS.

A BOY WHO SINGS
A BOY WHO DREAMS
A BOY WHO DIES
A BOY WHO SELLS
A BOY WHO SPEAKS
A BOY WHO SEES
A TAILLURED MAN
ANOTHER CRA Z Y.

SO WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT? DOES SOMEONE STAND UP, GO TO THE MIDDLE AND SING?
L: No, not quite like that. There will be various different scenes on stage, and always a soloist, who sings together with their instrument. There’s no single lead singer, but instead, everyone is linked to their instrument. And then there’s the ‘band’ behind them. There isn’t just one song, but sometimes two or three at once. There are various layers of songs.

SOUNDS EXCITING! YOU OFTEN USE PRE-EXISTING HARMONIC SEQUENCES. WILL YOU DO THAT HERE TOO?
Exactly. I’m using my chord catalogue.

YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO ME.
It’s a catalogue that will be published in book form this summer. It consists of moments from youtube: recordings of amateur choirs who sing a bit out of tune, so I hear major and minor chords, thirds, sixths, as though I’m hearing them for the first time. The expression is even more intense because it doesn’t sound like what I’m used to. At the same time I can recognize both a minor third and the expression of a minor third.

SO IN THE NEW PIECE THERE AREN’T ANY EXTENDED HARMONIC SEQUENCES THAT YOU’VE IMPORTED FROM ELSEWHERE? IN ‘SAI BALLARE?’, FOR EXAMPLE, THERE WAS AN EXCERPT FROM A HAYDN TRIO IN AN EXTREMELY SLOW TEMPO. INSTEAD IT WILL BE MORE A MATTER OF SINGLE HARMONIES…
…that I reassemble, exactly. And I have catalogued these harmonies according to various ‘expressions’ of my own, such as GLORIA, LES BAINS, LYS, REMEMORY, GEBET [prayer], APFELSINE [orange],
GOD WAS NOT A FEMINIST, and many others.

WHERE DO THESE SUBJECTS COME FROM?
The catalogue comes from various pieces I’ve written where I was looking for exactly these kinds of expression. And now I can go back to them. But I’m still collecting.

DO YOU HAVE THE SOUND OF THE CHORDS IN YOUR EAR OR DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP REFRESHING YOUR MEMORY BY HEARING THEM AGAIN?
By now I have almost all the chords in my head. They’re my treasures, my chocolate box, or maybe they’re a cupboard full of perfumes. [laughs]

WHEN YOU’RE COMPOSING, IS IT HELPFUL FOR YOU TO KNOW WHICH MUSICIANS ARE PLAYING? DO YOU WRITE FOR SPECIFIC PEOPLE?
Yes, that’s a big influence, especially for this project. It’s absolutely crucial who gets what song. For example, I can hardly imagine. Florentin’s song being sung by anyone else from the ensemble.

ARE THERE EXTRA-MUSICAL THEMES THAT FIND THEIR WAY INTO YOUR SONGS?
Yes, my ‘expressions’ are closely connected to my life. They reflect, for example, experiences, the reception of texts, artworks, the influence of friends…

ARE THERE PARTICULAR THEMES YOU WOULD LIKE TO MENTION?
No, I would rather leave it abstract. ‘Orange’ for example stands for challenging, radiant sounds that are nonetheless a bit sour. I’ve also written a poem for each expression. Here, for example, for ZUCKER [SUGAR]:
EMPTY EVERYDAY
HEAVENLY HAPPINESS
LIEBLING [DARLING]
HABIBI

YOU OFTEN MAKE USE OF THEATRICAL OR VISUAL EFFECTS IN YOUR MUSIC. ARE THESE ELEMENTS IN YOUR NEW PIECE AS WELL?
There will certainly be choreographic elements. I want to create duos that follow a choreography together, or influence each other in their playing. But that’s not fixed yet. The central point of it will be that I want to feel the electronic character of pop songs while mostly using traditional instruments. There will be one or two synthesisers at most, but otherwise it will just be acoustic instruments. I’m very curious how that will blend, or whether it will blend at all. That might be the biggest challenge, or maybe even the nicest moment, if it doesn’t ‘work’. Or if it only just works, just to
the point where you start to enjoy this hybrid situation.

YOU LIKE TO USE VERY UNUSUAL BOW SPEEDS FOR THE STRINGS, EXTREMELY SLOW OR EXTREMELY FAST, WHICH BRINGS OUT A VERY PARTICULAR KIND OF TONAL BEAUTY—FOR EXAMPLE, BOWING AT A BARELY PERCEPTIBLE SPEED, WHICH DOESN’T CORRESPOND AT ALL TO CLASSICAL IDEALS OF A BEAUTIFUL SOUND. BUT WHEN I LET MYSELF BE OPEN TO IT, I FIND IT INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL, POETIC, MUCH MORE COLOURFUL THAN A NORMAL ‘BEAUTIFUL’ SOUND. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS? WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO DO IT?
I think it all started with me wanting normal major and minor sounds in my music. [laughs] When the bow moves incredibly slowly, that then gives rise to other, somehow ‘dusty’ chords. And then came the choreographic aspect. With string instruments, I always see winged creatures. I see the music stand as the feet of a bird, and the arm of the player becomes the wing. It’s a complete object that I’ve always seen when the strings are playing. On top of all that, I also use bow speed to bring in a certain kind of imperfection. To incorporate the fact that one is never totally in control of the piece and that it can be shaped in the moment.

IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, YOU’VE WRITTEN FOR ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS, FROM SOLO INSTRUMENTS TO CHAMBER MUSIC TO FULL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. WHAT’S SPECIAL FOR
YOU ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE SETUP?
Large ensemble is fascinating because it can be soloistic and at the same time sound like an orchestra. So you really have the whole spectrum, and that’s particularly challenging. With an orchestra you can (and must) write more simply, and at the same time you get a lot of things as a bonus. With chamber music you can (and must) write with more differentiation. A large ensemble lets you shift between these two worlds.

WHAT YOU YOU MOST LIKE TO WRITE FOR?
Orchestra. Big. The more the merrier. More is more.

[LAUGHS] WHY?
It’s because of the chords. They have up to 32 parts. And to convey the full structure of these chords, more players are better. Some notes stick out, some are loud, some are in pppp, for example. And that’s incredibly hard to balance when you only have 16 musicians. Everyone interprets mezzo-piano differently, so it’s incredibly easy with smaller formations for the chord to turn into something else. Bigger groups just give you a certain safety margin. There you can give the prominent note to ten players and everyone plays in the same dynamic, but despite that the notes are louder because more people are playing them.

SO YOU DON’T JUST ANALYSE THE HARMONIES OF THE CHORDS, BUT ALSO THE BALANCE BETWEEN THE NOTES?
Yes, I also reinforce partials in the spectrum, which for me makes an enormous amount of expression possible.

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER THESE AMATEUR CHOIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’ve always listened to a lot of music. And when I lived in Rome in 2016-17, I got to a point where I suddenly didn’t feel anything any more. I wanted to find really new music, that brings joy, that makes you feel alive. And then I stumbled on these choirs in youtube. And it really was as though I was three years old again and heard Mozart for the first time, and got to experience these simple harmonies for the first time. And since then I’ve been seeking out and collecting these moments.

WHAT KINDS OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE TO LISTEN TO?
Everything. I love classical, early music, but also pop and hip-hop. My daughter has discovered K-Pop. That’s completely new for me. It’s similar, but completely different in expression. Most of all in the texts. It’s so exciting to see what kinds of feelings there are in this world and what differences there are alongside the parallels.

DOES WHAT YOU’RE LISTENING TO INFLUENCE WHAT YOU WRITE?
There are moments when I’m completely in love with certain pieces, and then it’s hard not to engage with that to some extent. Because at that moment I feel that there’s nothing better than this one particular piece. And I have to incorporate this love, this piece, even if it ends up being completely unrecognisable.

WHEN DID YOU START COMPOSING?
I first wrote something at 14, but I threw it out straight away, because I thought being a composer was for men, you can’t become a composer as a woman.

WHAT MADE YOU START COMPOSING?
Loving music. But I had never seen a piece written by a woman. In my world, something like that didn’t exist.

SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED?
Then, when I was 18 or 19 years old, I moved to Berlin, and there I heard a piece by Rebecca Saunders. And then I realised that a woman can be a composer. And that all came together with the fact that I wanted so much to make music, all my life, but absolutely didn’t want to be on the stage.

AND THEN IT WAS CLEAR THAT YOU WANTED TO BE A COMPOSER?
Yes! I think it’s great that you can make music without having to make an entrance and stand up there on the stage. [both laugh]

HOW LUCKY FOR US! MANY THANKS FOR THE INTERVIEW—WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR NEW PIECE!

June, 2024

©Ricordi_Harald Hoffmann

 

Studio Musikfabrik – Concert Impressions
From the Concert Death & Desire
14. Oct 2023, Alte Feuerwache, Cologne

Sean Quinn – death & desire (2021 – 23) world premiere
Dieter Mack – Kammermusik II (1991)
Malika Kishino – Schmetterlingstanz (shortened version, 2023)
Kee Yong Chong – Splattered landscape IIb – cloud’s echoing (2007)

Studio Musikfabrik – Jugendensemble des Landesmusikrats NRW
Peter Veale, conducter

Janet Sinica, video / editing

The sorceress Medea comes from Greek mythology and is an important subject throughout cultural and musical history.
Now the American composer Michael Hersch (born in 1971 in Washington) has devoted himself to the material – in a large-scale work for the soprano Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg and the Ensemble Musikfabrik.

Egbert Hiller spoke with Michael Hersch about MEDEA.

The world premiere takes place on June, 3rd at “Musikfabrik im WDR” .

Benjamin Kobler: You started composing at an early age. When was that and where are you coming from musically?

Sarah Nemtsov: I started writing down little melodies and stuff like that when I was 8.  I would say that from the age of about 13 it became more serious, that I also had the desire to become a composer. I also wanted to be an instrumentalist and I did that for a while, first playing the recorder and then switching to the oboe when I was 14. I then actually wanted to become an oboist and composer directly, had that in mind and pursued that – without thinking about whether I would have great success with it. Actually, it was like how others want to become a fireman or an astronaut at an even younger age. I had the feeling that I had to follow this path. But then I kept meeting people who encouraged and supported me. That was just great luck – they were very important people, even before I started studying. They didn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re crazy.’ My music teacher in high school, for example, who gave me my first orchestra assignment for the school orchestra when I was 15. Or my mother, who was a freelance artist and lived a bit utopian herself. So I didn’t care that it was actually so difficult.

BK: What was it like when the school orchestra played that first orchestral commission?

SN: Yes, that was crazy. I played in it myself, too. You think of something and then it sounds so similar, but something also sounds completely different. In the end, it’s still like that today. That is then the learning, the process, the experience that you have to think more carefully. As far as the vision is concerned, sometimes it goes more in the direction of failure, sometimes it is more successful, sometimes even more than perhaps hoped for. It’s very gratifying, and at the same time, somehow every premiere is always a kind of shock.

BK: So on the one hand it’s gratifying when something succeeds, and on the other hand, when things don’t work out, do you get angry about it or does that motivate you more?

SN: Yes, I am quite harsh with myself. Sometimes it’s the case that, for example, certain passages or moments in a work may work well on the outside and are more or less successful, but for me they don’t work out formally or in terms of structure. I then take very careful note of that. I usually don’t make major revisions to a piece. I prefer to let it go and try to take up this experience for myself for a next piece. Sometimes the assessment changes, too. I may find the same piece successful one time and terrible the other. I am not always at one with myself in my judgment. And that has nothing at all to do with the performers or the audience. It’s really a thing between me and myself.

BK: Why do you react differently?

SN: It has to do with what interests me at the moment. I may have just gotten away from something compositionally, renewed myself, and actually can’t listen to something at all. I find it terribly boring and think, ‘Oh, what have you done there again.’ But then when I look at that piece again two or three years later, I sometimes have enough distance to say, ‘Oh, that might have been all right.’ But in between, I’ve had to inwardly reject it first. That happens to me quite often. It’s an important process to move on. And I think it also has to do with the fact that on the one hand there are aspects that concern only one piece, and on the other hand there are phases in which certain things interest me across compositions, certain themes, playing techniques, sounds, structures. It’s like a terrain in which I research and which also grows. But then sometimes I have to pull myself out of it by force, so to speak, and go somewhere else.

BK: I’d like to ask you about one of your chamber pieces that we produced during the lockdown. In the duo WOLVES for oboe and prepared piano, there are a few violent moments that are also theatrically highlighted. For example, the oboist cuts his reed. Can you talk about how that came about and why that seemed to be necessary for you?

SN: Yes, the piece is really a bit brutal. But it’s not just aggressive, it’s also tender. It was commissioned by my former oboe professor Burkhard Glaetzner in 2012. I studied with him and then freelanced as an oboist for about two years. Then, with a cut, I decided to stop playing the oboe and focus only on composition. I wrote my first major opera. Later Burkhard Glaetzner gave me this commission as a farewell to his teaching at the UdK. That in itself is a difficult commission: to write a piece for someone as a farewell. He was not only my second oboe professor, but already important for me for the decision for the instrument itself. As a child, we had CDs with Vivaldi concertos in his interpretation, and I found that so incredibly beautiful that I simply wanted to play the oboe. That’s why he was an important figure for me as a child. It’s actually impossible, but I wanted to put all of that into this piece plus my own relationship to this instrument. So there are these different levels that the oboe goes through, also different registers, different colors. And then there’s the first cut on the reed, which makes the sound brighter and more unpredictable, and then the second cut, which makes any sound impossible and there’s just the air noise. That’s a theatrical gesture, of course, but it also does something to the sound.

BK: And in another duo we also produced: White Eyes Erased, for drumset and keyboard, there are also visual elements, like slides projected on a screen. What connection do those have with the sounds, what’s the significance of that?

SN: That’s a piece I distilled from a large ensemble piece. I’ve had that happen a few times, which is maybe because things still continue to accompany me, or I layer so much that you can then dig it all up again individually. The keyboard has 88 samples and almost every key is linked to an image. I deliberately assigned some images to certain sounds, a mixture on the one hand of images of my mother, who was a painter, and on the other hand there are photo projections that are a bit jumbled and in terms of aesthetics look like your own cell phone pictures that you scroll through, sort of unordered: some walls, film stills of Maya Deren and Freaks, images of Cage looking for mushrooms, because there are also a few Cage quotes in the samples, but everything totally bent and electronically alienated, you can’t really tell. There are also snippets from the band Animal Collective. It’s a wild mix, and in the same way the samples are a wild mix that gets messed up.

BK: One more question about the new piece you got the commission from us for. You were talking earlier about fields you’re tilling. Are you also in something like that right now that could feed into the piece?

SN: For quite a long time, the theatrical was important with me; 2010 to 2019, that was always of importance and showed up in certain pieces. And then somehow I got tired of it. I think also during Corona I had the feeling, enough now. I have to get out of there. During the time of Corona, a lot has changed for all of us. I was lucky enough to continue to have assignments. So I couldn’t complain. But it still did something to me. In a way, I may have come back more to a core. I wrote a quintet for the ensemble intercontemporain, KETER, during that time. That means crown, so like corona, but it also has other meanings, for example, for the Holy Book: ketarim are little crowns, decorations of the Hebrew letters when the Torah is written. There is also a spiritual meaning of keter: as the highest sephira of the Kabbalistic tree. When I composed this quartet, I felt, here is actually something that I am just beginning. That sometimes happens with me, that I have pieces where I think, I’m now going into an area here, I’m opening a door and behind it is a corridor and more doors are waiting… Actually there should be several pieces. Based on KETER, I now want to write a cycle for fall 2023 that deals with the space in between, the gap, the possibilities and also the contradiction between writing and interpretation, physis and psyche. There are to be three pieces. In addition to the first one, two others are to be created, a second quintet and a large ensemble work for you, which will bring together different thoughts.

I’m looking forward to it, because I’ve always listened to Musikfabrik from a distance for years, watched it and experienced some concerts and heard recordings. That was very inspiring for me. For example, Liza Lim, Tree of Codes. I found that impressive, but also many other things have remained alive and important in my memory. Then there was our first collaboration in 2020, very shortly before the Lockdown came, and finally the Lockdowntapes. During that time, that was something very special. First of all, that anything took place at all. A comforting and encouraging project from you. And then to feel, even though we couldn’t rehearse together at all, that the music had reached you. For me, these are three totally beautiful recordings, with great liveliness and intimacy, which is otherwise not so easy to produce in this medium. I look forward to the real meetings and our collaboration in the time to come.

December 2021

Steffen Krebber – Amphiference (2019)
for drumset, minimoog and two loudspeakers

Dirk Rothbrust, drumset
Ulrich Löffler, minimoog

Michael Bucur, sound direction
Rashad Becker, mastering
Peter Mödl, sound engineer
Benjamin Ramírez Pérez, director & editor
Marie Zahir, image design
Martin Paret, Adrian Witzel, light & camera assistance

On 28 January 2022, Amphiference will be released on vinyl by Umland Records.

Rebecca Saunders – Caerulean (2010/11) for bassclarinet solo

Caerulean was written for Carl Rosman

Carl Rosman, bass clarinet
Janet Sinica, video/editing
Achim Schunck, editing
Hendrik Manook, recording producer/editing

Ensemble Musikfabrik
Hans Fahr, Video/Schnitt
Janet Sinica, Kamera (Konzert-Video)
Paul Jeukendrup, Klangprojektion (Konzert-Video)
Thomas Wegner, Assistent Tonprojektion (Konzert-Video)