Untitled songs: "49 years from Gesang der Jünglinge (2005-1956)"
sirr020


Subtitled "49 years from Gesang der Jünglinge (2005-1956)" this double CD represents a comprehensive view on today's non-academic electroacoustic music, explicated through "songs" - which may or may not include vocal sound - by some of the most intelligent composers working from the outside into the very depths of our perceptive systems. All the conventional rules of sound placement get graciously massacred to let new spirits fly out of their ruins; we get pleasantly lost amidst the probabilities of sonic gibberish changing nature dramatically to become modified pellucid figures in a grey area of unsubstantial indelibility. It almost seems that the brain wants to disobey the ears, choosing to remain in a state of disoriented revolution while trying to decode the continuous quibbling coming from these charming configurations. The authors' notes for every piece can be downloaded from the Sirr website; my personal preferences, if this makes some sense in such a pantheon of good artists, go to Andre Gonçalves, Jgrzinich, Heitor Alvelos and Marc Behrens on the first (and best) - disc, and to Dale Lloyd, Derek Holzer and James Eck Rippie on the second. But it's the general level of the whole set that leans towards an undifferentiated excellence.
__Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

The adjective "seminal" gets bandied about quite a lot these days, but it surely applies to Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge ("Song of the Youths"), a 13-minute work for five-channel electronic tape based on texts from the book of Daniel sung by a boy soprano. Nearly half a century after its premiere in Cologne's West German Radio on May 30th 1956, Sirr's Paulo Raposo has compiled Untitled Songs as a kind of 49th anniversary tribute, but is quick to point out in the accompanying press release that "the works on this CD are not plain homage [sic], nor are they sampled from the original. They are rather a survey of the current state of electronic / electroacoustic music that exists half outside academic music life. The composers, musicians and artists on this CD are interested in locating themselves within their own history by further exploring the topics of sound spatialization and / or use of human voice with electronics, or they undertake a transformation of the original concept towards a personal approach to the sound, or to the original's biblical words." Raposo also situates the Stockhausen work in a wider non-academic context, referring to Sonic Youth (surprise) and the Beatles, whose (Sir) Paul McCartney described "Gesang" as his favourite Stockhausen piece (Karlheinz can, of course, be seen lurking on the back row of the guests invited to appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).
The brief, then, seems relatively clear; instead of simply "remixing" the Stockhausen (which these days more often than not means loading it up onto the computer and diddling around for an afternoon with ProTools or SoundForge or some other fancy software package), the 21 featured sound artists present their own reflections on the issues raised by Gesang, as described by Raposo above. Several refer obliquely to the original's textual content – the story of the burning fiery furnace – by sourcing their work in field recordings of the elements, notably fire (Rui Costa, Marc Behrens, Derek Holzer, Stephen Vitiello..), others explore the sheer physicality of the human voice, which, along with the spatial element, has always been the most striking aspect of the Stockhausen original. Janek Schaefer recorded the word "love" sung at seven different pitches by seven different women (including his wife and mother-in-law.. that's love for ya) and built a ravishing seven-minute composition from the results. André Gonçalves recorded his own voice in the naturally resonant acoustic of his bathroom and mixed it with sinewaves in a sensitive exploration of difference tones and interference patterns that probably has more to do with Alvin Lucier than it does Stockhausen. Vocal fragments also appear towards the end of John Grzinich's offering (is the title "[synthetic voice]"? It's not clear in the pdf liner notes if those square brackets are used solely to indicate track titles or not..) but the track is notable for its shimmering haze of distant percussion. As is often the case with jgrzinich's music, what seems simple is in fact deceptively complex, a micropolyphonic tapestry woven of tiny sounds. Stephen Vitiello's contribution, sourced in a recording of a campfire in upstate NY, is intriguingly dense, despite the composer's admission that it's the result of a single processing pass. Not too far away from Vitiello's roaring flames, Andrew Deutsch's work is closer in feel to the original Stockhausen – there's no need for the composer to sound so apologetic, as it's a fine piece of work, and I'll bet Karlheinz would say so too.

Heitor Alvelos returns to the idea of childhood by basing his piece on archive recordings of himself as a (from the sound of it, very young) kid, in a touching if rather cavernously reverberant three-and-a-half minute self portrait. Cavernous is also the word that comes to mind on listening to Latvian sound artist Maksim Shentelev's piece, recorded in a disused and leaky military bunker in the middle of a pine forest. Treating and overlaying his recordings to create an evocative soundscape of ominous lo-fi buzzes and drips, Shentelev comes up with something far more appetising than his accompanying text ("these endosonic elements build non-informative relations filling a meta-environment with the shifting vibration of chaotic motion.." umm, yeah). Marc Behrens contributes a typically elegant if austere re-examination of field recordings previously used in his "Keyholes" installation (a version appears on the 1999 trente oiseaux release Four Installations), which is beautifully juxtaposed with Rui Costa's delicate treatment of water and fire sounds recorded in a Portuguese village. After this – and hats off to Raposo for sequencing the tracks into an overall form that's every bit as satisfying as the individual pieces themselves – Anthony Pateras and Robin Fox turn in a typically energetic montage of gargles, gurgles and, appropriately enough for these men at work from the land down under where women throw and men chunder, finger-down-the-throat dry heaves, all Max/MSPed to death. Great fun, but you might not want to play this one while you're having dinner. In comparison, the rather nondescript rumble served up by the enigmatically named yoko.lennon is nowhere near as exciting – in fact it's a rather subdued way to end the first disc of the set – but is unlikely to interfere with your digestion.

The second disc starts off oddly, with a four-minute sound poem featuring Anna Homler on vocals, pocket theremin and wooden boxes and cellist Michael Intriere (formerly of the wonderfully-named Fat & Fucked-Up ensemble), with Mark Wheaton adding electronics to their rather Berioesque offering. Achim Wollscheid's curiously disembodied narrative recounting how he first heard Stockhausen's Gesang at school (or at least he thinks it was that piece) is followed by Dale Lloyd's subtle erasing of all but the consonants of a story of unknown origin told by Japanese woman, which prepares the listener perfectly for the elusive montage of field recordings (could those be fire alarms?) and spoken text courtesy of Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, aka @c, and Steve Roden's "between vowels and consonants", based on his own vocal improvisations recorded while listening to the Stockhausen original on headphones. Karlheinz would probably have a hard time spotting Roden's voice, let alone any direct reference to his own music, but he'd have no difficulty identifying the trusty ring modulator Roden has used to transform his source material.
Asmus Tietchens contributes a splendidly uncompromising and typically inscrutable five minutes. Shame my German isn't up to understanding his spoken text, but at least you know where you stand with the liners: "I tried to achieve a religious ceremony's travesty [sic], because – besides its undoubted musical value – Gesang der Jünglinge is a deeply religious piece and Stockhausen a superstitious human being. Therefore I pity him." Nuff said. Derek Holzer also uses a six-track recording of a wood-burning furnace (seems the biblical imagery of Gesang's text has been as influential in this project as Stockhausen's music) and a Chinese-language shortwave broadcast (shades of Kurzwellen, perhaps?). The furnace was recorded in Latvia, by the way, as was the text used in Paulo Raposo's own contribution, though it describes Raposo's experiences in the Chihuahua desert of northern Mexico. There are plenty of references to the planet Sirius and visiting aliens, which Stockhausen would probably enjoy (Asmus Tietchens presumably wouldn't), though I wonder what he'd make of Raposo's distinctly concrète assemblage of cooing pigeons, lapping waves and distant traffic noises. Houston Texas based turntablist James Eck Rippie's seven minutes and twenty seconds of heavily processed choral music are as beautiful and evanescent as they are simple, but it falls to the self-styled citizen of the kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland (shades of Hymunion, Harmondie and Pluramon in Stockhausen's Hymnen), Carl Michael von Hausswolff, to close proceedings with a characteristically frosty and forbidding thirteen minutes of arid, throbbing drone. I'd have preferred the Rippie myself, but never mind.

So, quite apart from trying to guess what Stockhausen himself would make of it all (though I do hope a copy has been sent to Stockhausen HQ in Kürten, and that Paulo Raposo will in due course report back to us at PT with his reactions to it), how will this collection of pieces sound in 49 years' time? My own favourite memory of Gesang der Jünglinge is of my former professor of Music Theory, Bob Morris (now Head of the Composition Department at the Eastman School of Music) actually singing along with the boy soprano. It recalls Anton Webern's wildly optimistic prediction that one day the milkman would whistle his music.. well, maybe we'll have to wait another century or so before that happens, but anyone with a good ear for pitch and bit of musical training can indeed, on repeated listening, follow the serial pitch logic of Stockhausen's vocal writing without too much difficulty. (And if you're ever hear about a concert performance near you of the work in its original five-track spatialized form, make sure you get to it.) But even Bob Morris would have a job singing along to most of the music on offer on Untitled Songs. It's not that these pieces lack identity (though there are three or four I would have left off if I'd been curating the project myself) – far from it: the Schaefer, Rippie, Roden and Raposo tracks, to name but four, are spectacularly good examples of contemporary electronica's ability to create rich and unique sonic ecosystems in a few minutes with a limited amount of material. But ecosystems are fragile things, and tiny meteorological changes can damage them irreparably, while your average Gothic cathedral has been standing for centuries, and, unless we're really unlucky and a bloody great asteroid smashes the planet to smithereens or some fucking idiot crashes a 747 into it, it'll still be standing there several centuries from now. These 21 Untitled Songs are exquisite photographs of a beautiful landscape, but Gesang der Jünglinge is still the mighty cathedral towering above it.
—DWarburton paristransatlantic.com

Portugal's Sirr records present a 2 CD compilation of 21 artists working in some way from Stockhausen’s piece Gesang der Jünglinge. Sirr's reasons for its 'non-homage' is that the piece has become almost public domain by being, "taught in music lessons, and held high as a landmark of specific style or method or epoch. We [should] add it to the common cultural goods, just as we might do with our knowledge of, say, statesmen or famous artists."
So already this creates an interesting perspective, one that moves Gesang der Jünglinge away from the world of academic electroacoustic circles and more towards newer emerging practice. As Andrew Deutsch says in the liner notes "We are now all independent working at home alone." This reflects the wide ranging survey of techniques from familiar field recordings, to the downright odd, to the narrative. We find a collection of work both directly and indirectly related to Gesang der Jünlinge. I like this split with the academic world, in fact of the names I recognise, as far as I know, none are working within academia at the moment. It may be obvious to state, but it is the fact that recent changes in computer power have created such a wealth of experimentation outside the closed world of electroacoustic studios. The one problem here maybe the re-invention of the wheel. Those working outside the studios, those working "at home alone" may not be aware of developments and critical frameworks which surround their work. They risk creating a non-developed music. But it is also important to point out the danger for musicians to think like critics and assume that pieces are born of other pieces, instead of from personal non-musical experience. Becoming obsessed with music already in existence, instead of externalizing perceptions in personal forms is just another way to re-invent another sort of wheel.
So rather than picking over one track versus another in terms of relevance to Stockhausen’s piece, I'll pick few favourites. Voices are both at the heart of this CD and at its absence. Janek Schaefer's piece, one assumes, by being first on the compilation is also a favourite of the label. The charming idea of having the 7 women in his family sing the word love over different pitches creates a simple but distinct beginning to this compilation. Schaefer's own practice seems wonderfully reductive at the moment he keeps the toys, fireworks and glitch software, that can curdle so much electronic music well away from his work, and sticks to volume, spatialisation and a complex investigation of the human voice, where the inconsistencies of the Schaefer family choir create eerie microtones similar to Ligeti's late 60's work for voices.
Achim Wollscheid's slurred short story about maybe hearing Stockhausen for the first time is a beautiful and welcome return to narrative. Recited in a voice sounding like a stand-up comedian whose blood has been replaced by tranquilizers, the atmosphere created is both deeply strange and silly at the same time.
If anything, the most telling sounds that are missing from this compilation are electroacoustic gestures - the bouncing ball, the randomised pitch clusters, accelerating crescendos. Of course this group of recordings is not without its own sound marks. The granulated clicks, smothering undynamic drones, the bubbles of spectral stretching are all other forms of clichés, and regularly appear on some of the tracks here. Clichés that hopefully will not be trapped in style as the software processing becomes more subtle.
On hearing this compilation, one could say experiments in spatialisation have regressed away from the original multi-speaker set up of gesang der jünglinge and into the territory of isolated headphone listening. Dale Lloyd's piece, for example, is almost completely un-hearable [as opposed to un-listenable] on speakers. But on headphones the bustle of city life is temporarily displaced by this extremely fragile work of adjusted speech patterns.
One negative criticism that could be leveled at this compilation is that it fails to address or relate to the extremely spiritual nature of the original Gesang der Jünglinge piece. And so as with all contemporary computer music, sometimes it is impossible to distinguish between progress and empty experiments in formalism. And one of the reasons for this could be that the inspiration, Gesang der Jünglinge, has been treated as an innovative formal piece, with its merging of vocalisations and electronics, rather than the deeply spiritual piece it also is.
If we refer back to the original apocryphal "Song of the Three Children" that the words from Gesang der Jünglinge are based on, then maybe the reframe of thanks that is given from those escaping the fiery furnace is of use:
"Praise him, and Magnify Him for ever."
I see this release as a varied, close-mic magnification of the world today, whoever created it. It is well worth seeking out.
—Mark Mclaren sonicartsnetwork.org

50. Why should that anniversary be more significant than others? The label Sirr probably did not want to wait any longer to pay tribute to
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s genre-defining “Gesang der Jünglinge,” the
composition that introduced sound spatialization (and multi-channel
composition) as one of the key interests in electroacoustic music, back in1956. The main focus of Stockhausen’s piece was a transformation of the human voice into an electronic instrument, the raw material being a female voice reading an excerpt from the apocryphal Book of Daniel, about burning souls. Untitled Songs collects 21 pieces by artists who acknowledge the work’s influence and offer a modern take on the relation between voice and electronics or, in some cases, develop its “fire” theme. Most of the
contributions are previously unreleased, but a few others were already known, including Janek Schaefer’s beautiful “Love Song,” which smoothly opens the proceedings on disc 1. The piece features the voices of the women in his family, recorded singing the word “love” on various pitches. Heitor Alvelos also remains in his family, using the earliest recording of his own voice as the basis for his piece. Dale Lloyd extracts vocal consonants from a dialogue in Japanese to shape an alien form of communication, though not as alien as the landscape Paulo Rapososoundpaints. Anna Homler’s improvisations in her own unique language (accompanied by cellist Michael Intriere and engineer Mark Wheaton) provide the only mostly-acoustic contribution, a bit out of place at the beginning of disc 2, but still a fine piece from an artist too rarely heard. Andrew Deutsch, John Grzinich, Anthony Pateras and Robin Fox (as a duo), and Steve Roden also contribute strong pieces. There is no need to be familiar with Stockhausen’s work to enjoy Untitled Songs -- although you should, if only for its importance in music history. This 2-CD set can be approached simply as a broad picture of contemporary sound art with a focus on the human voice.
__François Couture, All Music Guide

Questo spartano doppio dischetto, denominato laconicamente “Untitled Songs”, costituisce senza dubbio una interessantissima esperienza d’ascolto: concepito come omaggio collettivo al seminale Gesange der Jünglingendi Karl Heinz Stockhausen a 49 anni esatti dalla pubblicazione, offre oltretutto la possibilità di gettare uno sguardo (naturalmente incompleto) sull’attuale panorama della musica elettronica/elettroacustica.
Quando Karl Heinz Stockhausen licenziava il suo Gesange non avrebbe potuto immaginare l’amplissimo spettro di influenza che quest’opera avrebbe raggiunto: non solo all’interno del mondo musicale accademico e della relativa riflessione teorico-musicale, ma, in modo più pervasivo, in diverse espressioni appartenenti all’universo contiguo della ‘popular music’, il quale non mancherà di omaggiare ripetutamente (a partire dalla famosa copertina del beatleasiano Sergent Pepper ) compositore e pezzo in questione.
Il rapporto tra suono/fonte sonora e voce (e relativi ‘trattamenti’) costituiva il nucleo concettuale alla base delGesange : su questa piattaforma, ma con risultati del tutto personali, si sono cimentati i ventuno scultori sonici invitati dalla label portogheseSirr, ognuno offrendo una personale visione/soluzione al problema, ognuno libero dal vincolo di utilizzare o meno materiale dell’opera omaggiata come eventuale punto di partenza o improbabile ‘cantus prius factus’.
Diciamo subito che non tutto ci è piaciuto.
Immediatamente colpisce lo humour sottile di Andrew Deutch, nel cui pezzo, tra voci processate e immerse in una gestuale broda di esilaranti suoni decontestualizzati, la partita si gioca più sull’aggiungere che sul togliere, verso una progressiva saturazione dello spazio sonoro.
A volte come nella traccia a nome di Stefan Vitiello , la voce è fantasma bambino, quasi spettrale relitto di un kodaliano coro di voci bianche, vagante su un ipnotico basamento di pulsazioni sonore.
Più spesso la cosa si fa seria (se non seriosa), come , ad esempio, nelle tracce di Janek Shaefere Andre Gonçalves, laddove un sottile manierismo sembra emergere dietro il sentito perorare: mai però si raggiungono gli eccessi di molta musica elettroacustica attuale, sovente incapace di evitare che l’attenzione eccessiva data all’’informe’ (o presunto tale) scivoli paradossalmente nell’’uniforme’ –il tutto diverso che ci pare paradossalmente tutto uguale!-.
Fortunatamente in “Untitled Songs” non manca mai un notevole senso architettonico applicato alle diverse tecniche di montaggio sonoro.
La ‘presenza’ del Gesange è maggiormente avvertibile in alcune delle tracce presenti, non già per le tecniche compositive impiegate (nessuno dei brani di “Untitled Songs” utilizza, come Stockhausen, procedimenti di tipo seriale nel trattare la voce) ma come retaggio concettuale, come idea di fondo: nel magnifico duo Homler/Intriere teso e di forte impatto; nelle frequenze gravi dell’ipnotico, siderale drone di CM von Hausswolf nelle voci ‘rotte’ che popolano la magnifica traccia di Dale Loyd; nell’attitudine ‘concreta’ di Derek Holzer , fino al minimalismo post-post-post di Steve Roden.
Da ascoltare ed ‘auscultare’ con grande attenzione!
http://www.kathodik.it

Sono passati 49 anni da quando Karlheinz Stockhausen pubblicò su Deutsche Grammophon la storica composizione Gesang der Jünglinge. Alla composizione è riconosciuto un primato a proposito del ruolo strutturale che, nella sua economia, ha la distribuzione spaziale delle fonti sonore. Per la prima esecuzione c’erano quattro diffusori posti agli angoli della sala e un quinto al centro, sospeso in alto. Stockhausen dovette arrangiarsi con quello che, all'epoca, passava la tecnologia, cioè magnetofoni a solo una o due piste e uno speciale sincronizzatore per un massimo di due magnetofoni a due piste, quindi la quinta pista venne sincronizzata manualmente. Il pezzo, oltre alla concezione spaziale, conteneva anche altri elementi avveniristici, quali l’integrazione fra suoni vocali - la voce di un bambino che intona brani del “Canto dei fanciulli nella fornace ardente” (da un Vangelo apocrifo, il Terzo libro di Daniele) - e suoni sintetici organizzata secondo una logica compositiva di estrema lucidità.
Ee ecco l'inevitabile, sin troppo ovvio, tributo, esclamerete!
Se la pubblicazione di questo disco, a un tiro di schioppo dal cinquantennio, può far pensare ad una manovra da parte dell’etichetta portoghese per arrivare prima dei possibili concorrenti, nella realtà svincola “Untitled Songs” dalla banalità e dalla fastosità tipiche di ogni celebrazione ufficiale delle ‘nozze d’oro’.
Giustamente, perché l’influenza di Gesang der Jünglinge – e questa sottolineatura della Sirr appare piuttosto importante – è andata al di là dell’ambito accademico per infiltrarsi massicciamente nella cultura popolare. Quindi questo doppio CD non vuol essere un tributo né una celebrazione, bensì qualcosa di diverso e di più profondo.
‘I brani di questo disco’, come spiegano le note di copertina, ‘non rappresentano un omaggio ovvio, non sono campionati dall’originale. Essi sono piuttosto un’indagine sullo stato attuale della musica elettronica/elettroacustica che, per una buona metà, si muove al di fuori dall’ambito accademico. I compositori, musicisti e artisti di questo disco sono interessati a collocarsi dentro la loro propria storia per esplorare ulteriormente le tematiche della spazializzazione del suono e/o l’utilizzo della voce umana con l’elettronica, oppure mettono mano ad una trasformazione dei concetti originari verso un approccio personale al suono, o alle originali parole bibliche’.
In “Untitled Songs”, quindi, è possibile intendere i passi in avanti e le ramificazioni avvenuti all’interno della musica elettronica/elettroacustica a partire da quei primi (e non unici) vagiti. Logica vuole, quindi, che vengano abbracciati modelli espressivi ad ampio raggio e si passa:
- dall’ indulgenza verso la composizione di Stockhausen, mostrata da Janek Schaefer, alla mancanza di riguardo, e quando mai il tipo è stato accondiscendente, di CM von Hausswolff;
- da brani in cui l’utilizzo dell’elettronica è un elemento marginale, lo splendido duetto fra il violoncello di Michael Intriere e la voce di Anna Homler, ad altri in cui è fondamentale, l’altrettanto splendida pista di @C;
- dalla pacatezza ‘quasi’ ambient di Jgrzinich e Dale Lloyd all’irrequietezza rumorosa di Stephen Vitello;
- dalla candida giocosità di Andrew Deutsch alla seriosità di Marc Behrens;
- dall’affabilità ‘quasi’ pop di Steve Roden all’imperscrutabilità di Heitor Alvelos e Rui Costa;
- dai concretismi di Yoko.Lennon alla totale astrazione del duo Anthony Pateras & Robin Fox;
- dalla fragilità di André Gonçalves alla sontuosità di James Eck Rippie;
- dalla suggestività di Paulo Raposo e Achim Wollscheid alla drammaticità di Derek Holzer e Maksim Shentelev…
Ma, così esaminando, si corre il rischio di non vedere, per quanto è ovvia, la verità principale che emerge da queste registrazioni: i giovani di Stockhausen si sono ormai fatti adulti.
Se proprio dovessi trovare un difetto al doppio CD, lo individuerei nell’assenza di musicisti importanti, rispetto ai temi in questione, come Alessandro Bosetti, Ralf Wehowsky e Christof Migone.
“Untitled Songs” è un lavoro che tutti dovrebbero ascoltare, magari accompagnato dalla riscoperta di quel 'vecchietto' che, nel 2006, festeggerà la venerabile età di cinquant’anni.
__http://www.sands-zine.com

Qualquer obra musical que, pela sua abrangente influência, fosse capaz de incentivar os Beatles a uma maior apetência por metódos experimentalistas (pela mão de McCartney) e os Sonic Youth a adoptarem o nome que têm, só podia ser digna de uma grandiosa homenagem. Assim acontece com “Gesang der Jünglinge”, a determinante composição do pioneiro alemão – na área da electrónica - Karlheinz Stockhausen que conta com quase meio século e, contudo, parece ainda capaz de provocar entre os artistas afiliados à Sirr (e outros tantos convidados de honra) inquietude e agitação criativa equivalente à gerada há 49 anos atrás.
Tendo em conta que seria necessário uma tese para analisar aprofundadamente a composição que serve de mote ao duplo Untitled Songs, limite-se a um parágrafo o essencial para compreender a importância da peça vanguardista. “Gesang der Jünglinge” fundiu pela primeira vez sons electrónicos e acústicos (as duas matérias-primas mais preponderantes nos lançamentos da Sirr), fazendo de ambos ocupantes de uma reexaminada noção de espaço sónico e auditivo. Inspirado numa parábola bíblica pertence ao livro de Daniel – em que crianças atiradas ao fogo escapavam ilesas e, por isso, entoavam cânticos de graça ao Senhor -, “Gesang der Jünglinge” traduz-se, em termos práticos, num inquietante exercício de preenchimento de espaço atendendo às potencialidades oferecidas pelo stereo (ainda que Stockhausen, tal como Pauline Oliveros, na altura já explorassem sistemas quadrangulares) e novas soluções resultantes da combinação de ressonâncias vocálicas com tons inéditos extraídos a elementos electrónicos.
Ainda que tudo isto pareça demasiado complexo, a obra máxima de Stockhausen comporta uma mística intemporal capaz de transcender a importância histórica que a torna obrigatória aos ouvidos dos académicos do género. Parece a sua universalidade catártica (trata afinal da sobrevivência a uma experiência limite) torná-la num reflexo distorcido impossível de relegar à indiferença. E assim acontece neste acervo de reinterpretações, desconstruções e exercícios que à matriz pilham apenas um pretexto: vinte e um intervenientes deixam-se contagiar pelo fascínio provocado pelas vozes na fogueira. Os resultados variam – o autismo de um par de exercícios torna-os invariavelmente irritantes -, sem nunca deixarem de revelar a mesma ambição que permitiu a Stockhausen o passo de gigante nos meandros da electrónica. Aqui, um passo atrás equivale a dois em frente.
Percorramos então os casos mais salientes. Sem perder de vista o original e incidindo essencialmente sobre a componente vocálica, o multi-facetado Janek Schaefer – dedicado a comprovar a música como a arquitectura do som – frisa o aspecto fantasmagórico da peça de Stockhausen ao formar um coro – unindo a sua a sete vozes femininas diferentes - que, à medida que se vai adensando, torna indistinguíveis as camadas sobrepostas. Andrew Deustch encurta a distância entre um universo pueril e um plano alienígena através da vibração de sons que abrange ambos os espaços sem se deslocar. André Gonçalves capta ressonâncias à sua casa-de-banho no exercício que mais flagrantemente reclama por auscultação. Jgrzinich aproveita a ocasião para proceder a um exorcismo de estática. Através da “síntese de espaços” elaborada a partir de sons adquiridos a uma só paisagem e a movimentos humanos e mecânicos, Maksim Shentelev dá forma a um ambiente tão perturbante quanto aquele que nos deixava os nervos em franja em Massacre no Texas. As faces disformes deste estranho oculto provocam um nervoso irracional e, quando conseguem enovelar os ouvidos em casulo, alguns destes exercícios chegam a ser experiências extremas. Anthony Pateras & Robin Fox, por exemplo, emulam a intensidade de uma corrida de Fórmula 1 usando apenas sons produzidos acima do pescoço. E isso é obra.
Curiosamente, as prestações inferiores chegam com o mais notório (a olho nú) dos nomes presentes na compilação: Yoko Lennon perde sete minutos em torno de um qualquer objecto ao vento (ao que parece). Apesar de revelador e encaixar no grupo como peça-chave, a digressão de Achim Wollscheid em torno de recipientes de som mais parece um atentado à paciência que um ensaio sobre a composição matriz. É por bem do equilíbrio do conceito que surge a reflexão da dupla @c (Pedro Tudela e Miguel Carvalhais) que atira o cosmopolitismo à fogueira e a partir das labaredas edifica um fatalista jogo de extremos. O interesse mantém-se por níveis elevados enquanto Asmus Tietchens transforma “Gesang der Jünglinge“ num exercício de mímica que resulta num estranho discurso quase ditatorial.
Maior do que a vontade de assinalar “Gesang der Jünglinge” como obra essencial à compreensão dos fundamentos da electrónica, parece ter sido a convicção dos presentes em provar a sua pertinência e substancial omnipresença quase 50 anos depois. Não tivesse Stockhausen arriscado a fusão, e parece-me pouco provável que a banda-sonora de Akira (a cargo do colectivo Geinoh Yamashirogumi) fosse tão avassaladora quanto é e o impacto dramático das armadilhas Dolby Sorround profundo ao ponto de encher de pipocas o tapete das salas de cinema. A influência do génio perdura e conhece em Untitled Songs manifestação à sua altura.
Miguel Arsénio_BodySpace