Search - Lachenmann, Berner String Quartet, Bruck :: Helmut Lachenmann: Gran Torso/Salut für Caudwell

Shaped noises and structural innovations

04/10/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Lachenmann is a noise composer and very good at it. This means he shapes and redefines what we average concert listeners would consider noise. To Lachenmann it is all material on a sonic pallette to manipulate and discover a hidden beauty. Unlike some of his European colleages however, he also has found convincing structural frames which his shaped noises inhabit. For instance the idea of musical miniatures,very terse self-contained forms. Nicolaus A. Huber has also worked quite well along these same aesthetic dimesions as Lachenmann. The "Salut to Cauldwell" is a good example of how Lachenmann shapes noises. For here we have two acoustic guitars but he taps into the noises of bangs,blows on the instrument'sbody dampened strings,pings, harmonics, and scrapes. And since we have two performers we have double the excitement for they engage in a dialogue of means here dovetailing into each others rhythm so that when listening you don't really know where one begins and the other leaves off. The work is very long and does overspend its welcome, but then this is a relatively early piece for Lachenmann before he had resolved some of these structural problems. Cauldwell was a British writer involved in and commenting on the transgressive side of culture. The "Gran Torso" is also an intriguing work again with a hightened sense of form and extended techniques."