mobile hausmusik

Raining sheets of music and drilling bows

IIn the town-hall it was raining sheets of music for the finale. Inside, outside, above, below, in front, behind, right, left - the première of Thomas Witzmann's Mobile Hausmusik exploited every possible dimension.

Seldom the word "housemusic" was taken so literally as in this case. The composer from Cologne had indeed made his work to fit the acoustic and architectural conditions of the town-hall. This is also the reason why this evening the audience not only heard (and saw) a première, but witnessed a unique performance. The work is naturally not compatible to a different locality. But nevertheless this uniqueness did not captivate every contemporary.

It may be attributed less to the conception, but to the unwieldy sound structures, that 20 members of the audience left in the course of the evening. Only a few measures were literally composed, the biggest part of the work was carried out as a controlled improvisation. Groups of musicians were distributed on all levels and acted alternately as tutti or as soloists thereby acoustically measuring the room from all directions.

In the centre a group of strings (double-bass, violoncello and violin) served for a long time as rotation axis around which the other instruments moved in circles. Altogether motion was a main feature of the performance. The wandering instruments were joined by four female dancers, who from time to time were included in what was happening. Their appearance usually was accompanied by sounds more gentle.

A beautiful play of light and shadow was produced on the second floor: Behind a slightly transparent paper-wall the silhouettes of graceful female figures became visible. With a sense of humour a violincello bow and later a trombone drilled the paper-wall, at first cautiously, afterwards with the pleasure and the fury of destruction.

The composition - the intensity of which sometimes exceeded the limit to pain, but offering nevertheless interesting visual effects - intends to obliterate borders, to unite the arts, to break into fixed habits of hearing and seeing, intends perhaps even to be a "Gesamtkunstwerk", a work of all arts.

Dancers "glued" to the town-hall's windows

People taking a walk in the park on Sunday evening will have been amazed as four female dancers were "glued" to the outside of the town-hall's windows while two percussionists were "drumming" against the panes from within - one hour later two of the dancers, clothed in a bikini or in tights, sat together with the two percussionists on the town-hall's glass-roof lathering the panes.

These scenes were part of Mobile Hausmusik by Thomas Witzmann. Mobile was not the music, though (which the Cologne composer and producer had exclusively adapted to the premises), but the 20 musicians from six nations. These wandered around the house's four levels, at the same time accomplishing a masterly solo of the violoncello while walking.

The project, here and there reminiscent of Stockhausen's "Sternklang", offered music to watch and to listen to, including the experience in what ways a room is capable of sounding and vibrating when musically made the most of. The room, altered by effects of illumination, too, looked strangely unfamiliar, sometimes even weird, when Witzmann caused the instruments to crackle and rustle noisily on the galleries.

The Cologne composer, who all the time had several conductors coordinating the event, worked with spheres of sound. By ever new groupings of the instruments, he created interesting combinations of timbre; he toyed with the house's acoustics by intensifying dynamics or having the musicians wander among the audience.

The performance, lasting for almost one and a half hour, was particularly exciting in that extraordinary things happened simultaneously in many places, when for instance flute and tuba or viola and drum met during their musical walks, when the percussionists included the house's own sound by playing on the lattice, or when the dancers moved as silhouettes behind a translucent wall. Finally, all the sheets of music rained on the audience from above - music does not only require efforts being made, but is also transient if linked to one locality alone.

Galactic "House music"

"House music" - one imagines a "string quartet calmly delighted," something contemplative and refined. Yet Thomas Witzmann's Mobile Hausmusik, which was premièred at the town-hall on Sunday, seemed to come from the other side of the galaxy.

It was everything but quiet and subtle: a wildly vital spectacle piercing one's ears. Yet it was rather good - and literally "house music". The twenty musicians were not neatly ranged in front of the audience, but distributed about all the town-hall's galleries. They wandered around, moreover, and sometimes one imagined the house itself was singing, groaning, screaming, fluting, and what sounds more the avantgarde-composer drew from his instruments.

Even the more noiselike moments were ennobled by the exquisite ensemble whom Witzmann had assembled for his work. Their playing sent even at its loudest attacks only pleasant shivers down one's spine. Obviously, the composer knew less what to do with the four female dancers who were part of the work.

Engaged only now and then, anyway, they had to run to and fro behind the window panes on the outside of the town-hall, to dance as silhouettes, or to drag cardboard tubes across the banisters. One might have made more of this. But this is but a small critique of an excellently amusing evening of new music.