Hôtel de la Paix - Rejouer

Norbert Sterk: Hôtel de la Paix – Rejouer (2005/12/16)

Here you can listen to this piece, performed in Tel Aviv by the Meitar Ensemble | אנסמבל מיתר, Conductor: Guy Feder | מנצח: גיא פדר

https://youtu.be/kPgzHYdP1TM?si=odi3EMFpf7rjXbhA

”Into the trough of my silence/ place a word [...]“*

While listening to the sound inside those words of Ingeborg Bachmann, tracing the quality of colour in the vowels and consonants, listening to the white inmidst the words, music is created.

I selected 5 texts from the cycles Borrowed Time (Die gestundete Zeit), Inovocation of the Great Bear (Anrufung des großen Bären) und Poems 1957-61 as my literary model. The poetic images used in those texts could be linked in an associative manner. They form a kind of “homage” to Ingeborg Bachmann and tell of the retreat into silence, to the place where art can be created, of noticing a crumbling existence, of the self away from home, of love, violence and salvation…

The ensemble is devided in 2 groups:

Alto flute, clarinet and viola merge into a kind of new instrument which is modeled on the sound of human voice, translating the words of Bachmann directly into instrumental sound. It gives impulses for structural development of the other ensemble.

The Violin, Violoncello and Piano, a kind of “alter ego” for the first ensemble, are shadow, multiplicity, mirroring. And inside, the piano shines strangely in apparent mono-chromaticity….

Into the trough of my silence

place a word

and grow great forests on both sides

so that my mouth

lies all in shadow.

(Psalm 4, translated by Michael Lyons & Patrick Drysdale)

 

The burden of roses falls silent from the walls

and throug the rug shine floor and earth.

The heart of light breaks inside the lamp.

Darkness. Steps.

The bolt has been pushed before death.

(Hôtel de la Paix, translated by Mark Anderson)

 

Beneath a foreign sky

shadow roses

shadow

on foreign earth

in a foreign water

my shadow

(shadow roses shadow, translated by Mark Anderson)

 

Mouth that has slept in mine,

eye that has watched over my eye,

hand-

and the eyes that bore through me!

Mouth that spoke the verdict,

hand that hung me!

(Songs in flight XII, translated by Mark Anderson)

 

Wait for my death and then hear me again.

The snow basket tips over the water sings,

all sounds merge into the Toledo,

the ice is thawing.

A melody melts the ice.

Oh great thaw!

 

Ask much of yourself!

 

Syllables in oleander,

word in acacian green,

cascades from the wall.

 

Fill the basins,

bright and swaying,

music.

(Songs in flight XIV, translated by Mark Anderson)