Discography
Konrad Boehmer: The Piano Works - CD booklet text by the composer
POTENTIAL (1961) was composed during the first months of 1961, shortly before my matriculation at a secondary school in Cologne. The original version was subtitled 'de-composition'. A fully determined, serial musical texture was to be combined with textures which were only partially defined (in pitch and/or duration). These structures were supposed to be assembled by the performer himself and to be inserted into the original texture. As I have not been lucky with the results of this open form I later on elaborated three versions which are fully determined. Thus the performer may now choose between three versions and not within one single piece as previously. In its aesthetic starting-points, POTENTIAL is very close to the conceptions of the serial Cologne School (whose only pupil I was). The first performance of the original score was done in 1962 (Rome) by Karl Erik Welin. One of the three versions was premiered by Chaia Gerstein in 1966 (Amsterdam). On this CD, Nicolas Hodges performs two of the three versions.
TANGO DESLAVADO Y MOROSO (1984) was composed for a Tango Project initiated by New York's Quadrivium Music Press. The collection was never completed or published. As I have always been fascinated by the sharp bandoneon blows in Piazzolla's compositions or in the performances of the Argentinean 'Sexteto Tango', I tried to integrate them into my piece in the form of sharp dissonant moments. As the title of this little piece indicates, it is 'washed out' (deslavado) and 'dawdling' (moroso), in short: a real Tango. The first performance was done by Yvar Mikhashoff in October 1987 (Amsterdam).
KLANGSTÜCK I (1959) was composed during Stockhausen's composition course at the Darmstdter Ferienkurse of July 1959. The students on that course (I was by far the youngest) had been asked to compose a piece for piano, flute and percussion or for one or two of those instruments. Most of the young composers tried desperately to translate into their own compositions some of the ideas which Stockhausen had exposed during the course, but Stockhausen mostly showed no mercy. All that was very funny. KLANGSTÜCK I is based on a serial structure, but because I have lost my preparatory sketches, I do not remember any detail. It was Nicolas Hodges who plucked the score from the dustbin of history 40 years after its composition and premiered it as an encore (21 May 1999, St. George's Bristol, UK).
NORDISCHES LIEDCHEN (1975). When that prudish Norwegian music teacher once again preached to her class about all those great but very dead composers, my little nieces Desiree and Andrea dissented: 'They are not all dead. We have an uncle who is a composer and he is very much alive!'. 'Nonsense', said the teacher. Well, to prove that I was still alive, I had to compose a children's piece, designed for a school recital: it was performed by one of my nieces in Oslo at the end of 1975. The middle part of this piece is a quotation from a song used by the Scandinavian movement against the Vietnam war.
KINDERLIED ZU DRESDEN (1990). When I visited the East German town of Dresden for the first time in 44 years (7-10 October 1989, '40th Anniversary of the GDR' as it was described, even on sugar sachets in restaurants), I found myself between masses of demonstrators and - on the other side - police and state security service agents. During the street battles I remembered that little song which Robert Schumann composed (to an ironic text by Goethe) during the democratic May Revolution in 1849: 'Die wandelnde Glocke' (The Walking Bell), op. 79 no. 17, written in Kreischa, near Dresden. The poem describes a child who, instead of attending the church service on Sunday, chooses to stroll through the beautiful countryside. Its mother threatens that the big church bell might chase the child and cover it up. The child pays no heed and the next Sunday morning again makes its way into the countryside - until it hears the 'ding-dong!' of the bell approaching. In panic the child rushes straight to the church and likewise every Sunday forthwith - with the nightmare in mind. A frightful [usually means 'very bad' - don't know exactly what you mean] song about all failed German revolutions. I got the feeling that this composition referred in a strange way to those good Dresden citizens who - in 1989 - tried to escape from their 'red' church only to then find themselves in a 'black' one. Thus I 'de-composed' Schumann's Lied, transposing text and music into the situation of those days of October 1989 (when the entire GDR decomposed). On the musical level I employed the initial motive from Schumann's Lied (which imitates a church bell) developing it in a free manner. I only selected a few fragments from Goethe's poem which I then updated in reference to that 1989 revolution which dragged 15 million East German citizens back to the future. [First performance when?]
IN ILLO TEMPORE (1979) was written at the request of Geoffrey Madge. This demanding composition is conceived as an audible history of keyboard music. It assumes all the attitudes which have been adopted by keyboard-players towards the instrument (as well as its quickly developing technique and music since the Middle Ages): all gestures and 'attacks', which are here melted into a single composition. Nevertheless there is no question of a composition based on musical quotations. On the contrary, all references to historical styles, techniques, ornaments or performing attitudes have been subsumed into one single compositional method which guarantees the inner coherence of the various 'gestures'. From that primitive organ which was given by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Kopronymos to the Franconian King Pippin III ('the Short') in 757, up to modern grand pianos or even synthesizers, this music machine - operated by keys (levers) instead of buttons - has developed much faster than any other musical instrument. This dynamic evolution has influenced the composition of IN ILLO TEMPORE and consequently has technical implications for its performance. IN ILLO TEMPORE does not only require a pianist who has mastered all techniques, it requires a musician able to change his entire personality with lightning speed, climbing swiftly into the habit of a medieval monk (performing an organum), at the next moment putting on the wig of a baroque harpsichord virtuoso, then just as quickly changing into a romantic keyboard lion or even a Prometheus of the avant-garde. After a cadenza-like introduction, a plainsong melody on two notes leads us to the historical starting point. The piece closes with the same motive, followed by a coda whose rhythm is based on the words with which Edgard Varese intended to open his world-embracing symphony 'Espace': 'En avant, l'humanite en marche! Rien ne peut l'arreter!' (Forward, humanity striding ahead! Through whatever!) IN ILLO TEMPORE was premiered by Geoffrey Madge in October 1982 (Amsterdam). Before this recording (August 29, 2001) Nicolas Hodges performed the piece three times (London, May 20; Bergen/Norway, May 26; Dartington, August 5, 2001).
ORPHEUS UNPLUGGED (2000) was composed during autumn and winter 1999-2000. The editing and assembly of the CD part was done on my computer and in the Institute of Sonology (Royal Conservatory, The Hague; with thanks to Roel Funcken and Kees Tazelaar for their assistance). The sounds were recorded in different places and on different dates: river-sounds were taken from the Thracian Evros River; cackling and growling as well as the broken bones (those of politicians and clergymen sound best!) were recorded in the Thracian mountains. Thunder and wind were taken from the foot of Mount Olympus. In a nearby village we recorded the different sounds of water-pipes. Years ago the heartbeat was recorded in Oslo (from the then unborn Alexandra Jakobsen). The hoisting crane was recorded in Montbrison, the sawing machine in Kürten. I recorded the aeroplane from my open window, because planes land in a criminal way and without interruption above the centre of Amsterdam. Pissing and farting were recorded during the night hours in St. Peter's Cathedral (Rome), known for its wonderful acoustics. Those recordings had just been finished, when an old man in a white robe shuffled through the church, knelt down and kissed the still wet marble slabs. He murmured something like 'panta rhei' and disappeared into the gloom... What did he know about Orpheus' head drifting [??] in the Evros River? Albert Ostermaier wrote his three poems during summer 1999, and recorded them himself on August 18 the same year. They were written especially for the purpose of this piano piece, which may be considered as a kind of preliminary exercise for a music theatre piece we are currently working on. ORPHEUS UNPLUGGED was written for Nicolas Hodges to whom it is dedicated. [KB]
Konrad BOEHMER was born in 1941 in Berlin. He studied composition with Gottfried Michael Koenig (1959-61) and philosophy, sociology and musicology at the University of Cologne, writing his doctoral thesis on the theory of open form in new music ('Zur Theorie der offenen Form in der neuen Musik', 1966). From 1961-1963 he was active at the electronic music studios of the WDR (West German Broadcasting Company) in Cologne. In 1966 he moved to the Netherlands and worked until 1968 at the Institute of Sonology at Utrecht University. He then became music editor of the Dutch weekly newspaper Vrij Nederland and in 1972 professor of music history and new music theory at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where since 1994 he has been director of the Institute of Sonology. In the 1970s and '80s he was repeatedly guest professor at the 'Latin-American Courses for Contemporary Music', as well as extensively in the USA and Europe. His composition 'Information' was presented with the Dutch AVRO-award (1966) and the electronic work 'Aspekt' was awarded the first price of the Vth Paris Biennale in 1968. His music drama 'Doktor Faustus' was awarded the Rolf-Liebermann prize in 1983. In 1985 the City of Rotterdam awarded him the 'Pierre-Bayle-Prize' for his writings on music and musical life. His works include concert music (chamber and symphonic), music theatre and electroacoustic music. [http://www.kboehmer.nl] Recently, his new works QADAR and LOGOS PROTOS (electronic music) were released by BVHAAST Records, Amsterdam. Boehmer's works have been featured by the following festivals and organisations: Musik der Zeit (WDR, Cologne), Domaine Musical (Paris), Radio Tlvision Belge (Brussels), sterr. Rundfunk (Vienna), Tage der Neuen Musik (Hannover), musica nova (Bremen), Gaudeamus Music Week (Hilversum), Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest (Munich), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), ORTF (Paris), Thatre National de l'Opra (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Nationale Opera (Amsterdam), Nat. Opera Belgi (Brussels), UNM Festival (Albuquerque), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wittener Tage fr Neue Kammermusik, Stadsschouwburg (Rotterdam), Festival International de Musique Exprimentale (Bourges), Hamamatsu Festival (Japan), Helsinki Festival (Finland), Holland Festival (Amsterdam). The initiative to record Boehmer's piano music of the last 40 years was taken by Nicolas Hodges who prior to the recording sessions had performed most of the compositions in concert. Hodges and Boehmer dedicate this CD to their mutual friend, the French writer Michel Robic.
Albert OSTERMAIER was born in 1967 in Munich where he still lives as a freelance writer. In 1995 he published his first collection of poems 'Herz Vers Sagen', followed two years later by a second collection 'fremdkrper hautnah'. His theatre piece 'Tatar Titus' (1999) created a sensation in the German theatre world. Next to his dramatic and lyric output he has written several pieces for radio. The three poems of 'Orpheus Unplugged' were written especially for the piano piece on this record: they will be published at the end of 2001 in Ostermaier's next collection of poems. All the author's works are published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt.
Konrad Boehmer