Description

Selbstvergessen
für Sprechstimme mit obligaten Klängen

(Version for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company 1991 for 4 players/singers under the title: “Change of Address”)

One to four voice(s) trained or untrained, sung and/or whispered (1-4 ad lib.), violin (g string tuned to f), bandoneon, glassharmonica, cow bells (with soft sticks) and live electronic processing of the sound decays.

Words by Meister Eckhart

The piece is to be played such that each participating musician realizes his own tempo (around one fourth note equals one second) without coordination with any other musician. The result will be an involuntary heterophony, which is not moving away too far from each other. No canonic situations should emerge, rather a constant flux between the parts like pre- or after-echoes should arise. This oscillating flux of the pitches should allow to perceive this “Not yet” and “Not anymore” which is Selfforgetting a state of mind where one cannot focus on the self, mirrored in the unfocused progression of the pitches. The voices intonate words by Meister Eckhart which are put in a non grammatical order via a magic square of the 12th order and consists only of prime numbers. The players/singers donít have to intonate all the words and are free to choose the words the like to sing/whisper etc. together with their playing of pitches. Also whole pitch-lines can/should be omitted and replaced by silence, especially when canonic situations arise. The end at page 13 should become a coordination point with the word “Bewegung”(movement), which allows the last phrase to be played in an unfocused “unisono”.