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Lachenmann's Silent Voices (and the Speechless Echoes of Nono and Stockhausen)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2019

TRENT LEIPERT
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Abstract

In order to assess Helmut Lachenmann's characterization of (his) music as an ‘existential experience’ this article focuses on a specific aspect of many of his compositions: stretches of near-silence and minimized musical activity such as reduced dynamics and gestures which contrasts the surrounding material. I argue that in the case of his early vocal compositions Consolation I and II (1967 and 1968) these ‘meta-musical fermatas’ relate to a key portion of each work's text in order to encourage self-reflection on the part of the listener. My analyses reveal the influence of Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen, particularly in terms of word-setting and of the works’ spiritual and political messages. I further trace the changes undertaken in these compositions and in Lachenmann's commentaries for them over the following decade. I suggest these changes relate to political events in Germany occurring between 1968 and 1977 which also led to the conception of Lachenmann's ‘music with images’, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , October 2019 , pp. 589 - 619
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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