VITA ► WORKS ► C. CHAMBER MUSIC . . ► Röslein
Röslein (Roselet)
This piece was created as the soundtrack of the synaesthetic project Röslein, which I realized
together with the Bochum artist Thomas Zehnter for the competition Im Namen der Lippischen Rose in 2006.
The music develops the time period during which Thomas Zehnter choreographically paints his picture on the theme
of the „rose”. Music and painting enter into an intimate relationship in this joint project, and
– as characteristic for a successful relationship: – both partners exist quite independently.
The reason for this lies in the common reference to a third – namely Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's
well-known poem Heideröslein from the year 1771 and its setting by Franz Schubert, composed 44 years later:
Goethe's text with Schubert's music is not audible or visible as a whole or in longer sections, however, because this
project is not an arrangement or „orchestration” in the traditional sense; rather, Thomas Zehnter and I
were interested in the development of our own (auditory and visual) associations from the material of the original.
This process is nevertheless clearly structured: although Goethe's poem is really audible at certain points only, it
is parsed once completely in time – as a form – generator with a simple „circuit”.
1 „Goethe – letter” corresponds to 1 „Schubert – quaver” with a duration
of 575 milliseconds; this results in a total length of 4 minutes 28 seconds. This time base with its subdivision into words,
lines, stanzas and choruses forms the framework for the joint artistic work and provides for associative links.
Schubert's music is at odds with this kind of "Goethe-form" – after all, the rhythm of letters, speech rhythm,
and singing rhythm are already 3 different pairs of shoes. On the musical level this leads again and again to spin-offs
and detours (like a summary of all melody tones to one chord, ornamentation with „foreign” tones,
transposition into other keys, morphing into other pieces . . .).
Many associations helped me with the musical composition, all of which cannot be named in detail here.
As for the selection of the timbres, it seemed natural to have the text spoken by a boy's voice (Saladin Hafermalz)
and sung by a soprano voice (Kerstin Gennet); other instrumental voices take as their starting point the original
accompaniment for guitar or (later) piano.
All these timbres must suffer, as given in the poem, to be broken and changed in many ways. As one of many examples,
I'd like to mention the text quotation „Ich steche dich” („I prick you”), in which the soprano
voice is given a particularly piercing sound by filtering and phase shifting.
Other important elements are repetitions like „Röslein, Röslein, Röslein . . .” or also the soprano to be
heard at the end of each section of the stanza: „[. . .] auf der Heiden” (in the pastoral key of F major),
pedalization, such as the eternal e2 of the soprano that is heard from minute 2:11 (Goethe: „daß du
ewig denkst an mich” („so you think of me eternally”), in Schubert's original key, the voice
actually sings an e on the e of „ewig”!), and – introduced by this – musical transliteration
such as the tones a1 – c2 – h1 (German nomenclature for b1)
with the word „Ach”.
Mentioned above were the side paths Schubert's music sometimes takes – the similarity of the harmonic
progression of the first measures with the beginning of the Prelude No. 1 from the 1st volume of
J. S. Bach's Well Tempered Piano is especially striking because of its subsequent use as an accompaniment for
Gounod's Ave Maria.
Last but not least, the phenomenon known as „color hearing” plays a certain role for the selection of
tones and chords in some places. Different theories associate the tone G or also C with the color red, and in one
instance („mußt' es eben leiden” („simply had to suffer it”)), a tint made in Thomas Zehnter's
choreographic of red with blue to violet is linked to the „Tristan chord”
(f − b − d#1 − g#1) in Richard
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
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