Serenade

„Auf meine Stirne tritt kaltes Metall.“
(On my forehead cold metal forms.)

Serenade is a fixed-media composition for playback over a minimum of eight loudspeakers, commissioned by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). The work is built up out of a number of short, sometimes overlapping parts. A central role is played by sound transformations of a recording in which the singer Siân Wassermann brilliantly improvises over Georg Trakl’s poem “De profundis” (1912). The title Serenade also refers to Arnold Schoenberg’s Serenade opus 24, in which “Sprechgesang” was combined with structures that tend towards his later twelve-tone technique.
While the rigid compositional design of the music has no connection whatsoever with the content of Trakl’s poem, it is undeniably true that the alienating images he depicts in “De profundis” have found their way into the sound world of Serenade.
The individual form parts of Serenade will also appear in a new collaborative project with Richard Barrett.

„Es ist ein Licht, das in meinen Mund erlöscht.“
(There is a light that fails in my mouth.)

year: 2016–2017
duration: 16:10
tracks: 8

Available on the 9 Trajectories CD-box (INA-GRM G6050/59).