chamber music

ohne titel (0-4) is a series of five concert pieces written between 2019 & 2021, for one to five players & electronics. they are tuning studies, & a research into the passing of time.

je ne fais rien, c’est entendu. mais je vois les heures passer – ce qui vaut mieux qu’essayer de les remplir.¹

(i do nothing, granted. but i see the hours pass — which is better than trying to fill them.)

the indonesian word nongkrong literally means to squat, but in everyday use it means something more like hanging out: spending time together without any particular purpose. a wayang kulit performance can last from evening until morning; the musicians eat, talk, rest, & carry on playing through the night.

ohne titel (4), excerpt, with elio herrera sanchez

c. huet, g. wendt, wahyu kiky y. p & l. zimmermann playing *ohne titel (1)* at yogyakarta gamelan festival 2019

i was thinking about this kind of time & mode of attention while writing these pieces: time spent together without the need to make it productive … time that nobody is trying to fill.

a nearly black concert room. a pale lit wall, the glow of a laptop screen & two barely visible figures are all that can be made out — *ohne titel (2)*, folkwang, october 2021

first excerpt of ohne titel (2), studio recording, with mariana hernández, sofia von atzingen, roberto beseler maxwell, ying yu & tim pauli

second excerpt of ohne titel (2), studio recording, with mariana hernández, sofia von atzingen, roberto beseler maxwell, ying yu & tim pauli

ohne titel (2) & ohne titel (3) last about forty-five minutes. no conductor; the parts are mostly written in time brackets & every player holds a stopwatch.

close-up of a self-built electric zither, showing four magnetic pick-ups & small wooden moveable bridges standing on a printed grid of fret marks — the electric monochord built for *ohne titel (0)*

all five pieces are in just intonation. the electronics hold the pitches & the players tune into them: a tape, a retuned keyboard, six portable radios, four sine tones.

a large dark stage with an empty projection screen. two players sit far apart in a small pool of light, one at a zither, one with a guitar — *ohne titel (0)*, premiere at folkwang, january 2020

ohne titel (0), studio recording with taehyeon eom & song-yi kim

ohne titel (3) is played outdoors on a river, the players under a motorway bridge, the audience drifting past in pedal boats. it deals with the relation between silence, as sound without intention, & music, as sound with it.

under a concrete motorway bridge: a violinist & a saxophonist play on a ledge at the water's edge while the audience listens from pedal boats on the river — *ohne titel (3)* on the ruhr, mülheim, september 2021

ohne titel (3), excerpt from studio recording, with mariana hernández & philipp diederich

1. 1. cioran, de l’inconvénient d’être né (1973), translated by richard howard as the trouble with being born (1976).
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