On My Second String Quartet-Helmut Lachenmann .pdf

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On My Second String Quartet ('Reigen 1

seliger Geister')

Helmut Lachenmann Published online: 15 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Helmut Lachenmann (2004) On My Second String Quartet ('Reigen seliger 1

Geister') , Contemporary Music Review, 23:3-4, 59-79, DOI: 10.1080/0749445042000285681 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0749445042000285681

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Contemporary Music Review Vol. 23, No. 3/4, September/December 2004, pp. 59 – 79

On My Second String Quartet (‘Reigen seliger Geister’)1

Downloaded by [Boston University] at 23:47 04 September 2015

Helmut Lachenmann (translated by Evan Johnson)2

This is a translation of Helmut Lachenmann’s analysis of his second string quartet, Reigen seliger Geister. He describes the background of the piece, discusses some of the effects used in the score and shows how it connects to other works in his oeuvre. Although intentionally vague at times, it is nonetheless highly insightful. This article, written in 1994 – 1995, appears in German in MaeE. Keywords: Analysis; Extended Techniques; Listening; String Quartet

To speak about a piece, for me, means to describe the concept of material evidenced therein and to explicate the relationships in which it stands and by which it defines itself. The transcendental aspect of the piece—that is, its aesthetic and poetic force (Stringenz)—is not forgotten; its significance comes through in all of these observations. With all of the bias, incompletion—that is, imperfection—to approach it differently is to lose oneself in words. My first string quartet, Gran Torso, was written 19 years before Reigen.3 My conception of a musique concre`te instrumentale—in which categories are primarily delineated not by the usual parameters, but rather through the (always differently deployed) bodily energetic (ko¨rperlich-energetischen) aspects of their foregrounding of sound or of noise (Geraüsch)—had in Gran Torso to confront for the first time such a traditionally comprised sound apparatus (Klangapparat) as the string quartet, which has become almost forbidden by its very familiarity. In the earlier orchestral works Air and Kontrakadenz,4 the standard instrumental paradigm was distorted in terms of sonic realism through the backdoor of expanded percussion and additional ad hoc instruments: switches whipped through the air, snapped branches, rattling electronic alarm bells in Air—radio broadcasts, water sloshing in resonant basins, noisily rubbed polystyrene in Kontrakadenz ultimately simplified the necessary examination of hearing itself; they did not reach the summit, admittedly, but they showed the way, they helped ‘aim the antennae’ and made a number of things more plausible. ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0749445042000285681


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H. Lachenmann (trans. E. Johnson)

In Gran Torso, there were no such ‘backdoors’. The received playing style itself had to be expanded, rendered alien. The habits of hearing and performance implied by my chosen ensemble (Instrumentarium) created a resistance—‘their’ resistance— to my initial ideas about poetics and sound syntax. But this was fruitful and my visions became keener, more precise and more varied, as did my compositional means. Tone and noise were not opposites, but rather served as variants of broader sound categories brought to the fore in ever-varying ways. (Witness, for example, toneless string noise as the clear product of tremolo bowing, transformed by extreme slowness, that shifts over the strings all the way onto the bridge; or the legno battuto on stopped strings: here as a means of the pianississimo articulation of silence, there as an impulse-variant of pizzicato and other short attacks, as the product of vertical strikes of the bow against the string, mediated with other, springing, thrown, wiping, stroking forms of bow movement, definable as characteristic noises, but also as precise pitches in an appropriately different context.) And as in the previously written cello study Pression,5 the polyvalently expressed energetic aspect ultimately thematized itself. Everything was sparked by its ‘development’ (Durchfu¨hrung). When I conceived Reigen in 1988/1989, it was clear to me that every innovative push that Gran Torso represented (at least for me) had set a standard against which the new engagement with this ensemble (Besetzung) must measure itself. I could, in composing, neither simply make use of the earlier, already-developed means, nor could I abandon the terrain that I had conquered. It came down to how to proceed from there and this meant: to go ‘deeper’ and—with an outlook, as always, changed in the meantime—to see into the already-developed landscape more keenly. (This also entailed—not only in Reigen—the recollection of things previously excluded, the ‘reconciliation’ with the temporarily obsolete: with melodically, rhythmically and harmonically defined, even consonant elements—a reconciliation that could not be called a retreat into a pre-critical (vorkritischen) state, but had rather to signify forward-looking integration on a somehow resulting path.) In fact, the sonic landscapes developed in Gran Torso opened themselves even wider in Reigen, both inward and outward. In terms of sound technique, the work—as a field of categories completing and at the same time transforming itself poco a poco—emerges first through flautato gestures, while the mapped-out sound world gradually transforms itself into a diametrically opposed landscape of quite differently structured pizzicato fields. (I borrow the indication flautato from Luigi Nono’s Varianti, although its meaning and performance in his and my case do not overlap 100 per cent.) The flautato technique itself, in its absolutely basic form, is not only defined here through the relatively quick, light ‘breathing’ bowstroke on a string loosely held in a ‘muting grip’ (Da¨mpfgriff): there is also the simultaneous movement of the drawn bow between the bridge (at the frog of the bow) and the damping finger (at the tip). On the cello it is naturally reversed: movement between the bridge with the tip and the fingerboard (specifically, the damping finger) with the frog. (The sound of


Contemporary Music Review 61 harmonics must be muffled when using this technique. They represent a different part of the hierarchy of categories [Kategorien-Hierarchie].) A dull darkening of tone of more peripheral significance in other pieces, the flautato technique trades that in here for what I called ‘air seized from tone’ (Luft aus den To¨nen gegriffen) in my first introduction to this work (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 399). It is, at first, a sonic center—in other words, a central depot and hub for a characteristic wealth of variations of noise and sound. It mediates between absolute tonelessness on the one hand and full C-flat major consonance on the other. Through the movement of the bow from bridge to the damping finger (but also through the occasional ‘ethereal glissando’ (Spha¨rische Glissando) performed with the left hand, beginning or ending extremely high toward the bridge—‘in the snow’, the musicians say) the rustling opens up seamlessly into the pitch-oriented area (tonho¨hen-orientierten Bereich). According to the narrowing or widening distance between the bridge and the bowing location on the string, the flautato bow movement itself results in a brightness-glissando in the rustling component (Rausch-Anteil). It is accompanied by a crescendo of fingered pitches shining through when the bow moves over the center of the string. At the end of the string, by contrast, the rustling predominates. When the bow moves completely onto the bridge, the fingered pitches change completely into string noise (see Figure 1). The toneless string noise—almost a peripheral instantiation (Randerscheinung) of flautato playing—forms, along with analogous playing techniques on the scroll, the tuning peg, the rib, the tailpiece, or even in a very high—almost ‘arctic’—position, and—at the end of the piece—on the wooden mute, a more or less unique, characteristic repertoire of usable ‘rustle variations’ (Rauschvarianten).

Figure 1 # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


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The temporary ‘drowning’ of pitch in toneless string noise on the bridge allows a ‘hidden’ variation of the fingering so that, when the bow returns to the strings, the flautato sound resumes with pitches different from the ones it had when it was subsumed. Such disappearances and modified returns are achieved in Reigen through figures that can somewhat recklessly be called ‘trill variants’. These are ‘exercised’ and ‘exorcised’ through a wide variety of distortions: one could say that they propel the piece onward from the opening. Their most lavish variants appear as fast figures in an ordinario-bowed tutti texture that draws (real and imitated) overtone-glissando figures out of a polytonal field, and from there into tonelessness (see the score, mm. 85 – 112). That tutti texture can be brought, through synchronized dynamics and shared bow movements, onto the bridge and back onto the strings, from disappearance into tonelessness back into re-emergence in the same way as the simple flautato sound: what takes place in a single instrumental voice can be transferred to the whole instrumental apparatus (see Figure 3). Again and again in the course of the overall processes of the piece, we find ourselves involved with a single, almost homophonically treated 16-stringed sonic mechanism (Klang-Gera¨t). Its further instantiations: .

Unison sound and unison rustling, i.e. the synchronous multiplication or amplification of sound or noise (which by successive ‘switchings off’ of single instruments shift the resulting sound or noise into a different light, as the result of a subtraction process) (Figure 4).

Figure 2 Cello part, II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 6, mm. 26 – 28. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


Contemporary Music Review 63

Figure 3 II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 18, mm. 99 – 102. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

Figure 4 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 6, m. 27. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

.

The cooperative ‘paraphrasing’ of ‘simple’ modes of playing: for example, a sort of ‘composed’ flautato through the synchronization of grit-free harmonics, made

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.

H. Lachenmann (trans. E. Johnson) brilliant through a unison in half of the quartet, with absolutely toneless string noise intensified through doubling in the other players (Figure 5). And, as a further variation of such flautato nuances, the parallel deployment of tones greatly separated in sonic space (Figure 6).

Not least, the formation of such an imaginary ‘super-instrument’ (SuperInstrument) from its component ‘simple’ sound forms and playing techniques helped the compositional process to the diversification and dialectical redefinition of what appears at first to be a purely physically oriented sonic correspondence (physikalisch orientierten Klangzusammenhang), of which a speculative idea of abstract or concrete form—however clever—would not itself be capable, and without which the orientation of concrete sounds into a botanized presentation would be ruined. Also among the functions of the ‘super-instrument’ is the hocket-like formation of sequences out of mutually cooperative single entries of a few or all of the


Figure 6 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 32, mm. 177 – 180. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


Contemporary Music Review 65 instruments. The quasi-motivic gesture that is hinted at at the beginning, along with the ‘trill variants’, and then eliminated, works along these lines—as if depersonalized. The idea of the ‘super-sequence’ (Super-Sequenz) is the basic vehicle for the characteristic transformational process of this piece. It works as a bridge between the flautato structures of the opening and the pizzicato fields that drive everything else out at the end. From the viewpoint of the resulting ‘super-instrument’, one could also conceive of a ‘super-sequence’ as a wider or narrower ‘arpeggio’, in which successive entries came together as homogeneous sound sources in a total spectrum (Gesamtfeld) in such a way that—with large and irregular distances between entries and without ‘pedal’—they appear as a virtual sonic unity on the ‘inner screen’, that is, in the memory of the listener (see Figures 10, 11, 14, 17). The ‘muting grip’ has yet to be discussed: in principle it blocks all of the strings through a loose laying of the left hand on their actual vibrations, thus intensifying the perception of the ‘subsidiary noises’ (Nebengeraüsche). Lifting it, on the other hand, leaves the open strings free. Where this muting grip is applied so that it suddenly ‘closes the mouth’, so to speak, through an unexpected blocking of an unstoppably eruptive up-bow gesture, a ‘panting’ sound effect results; its ‘implosive’ ascending and sharply cut-off dynamic curve is the reversal of an ‘explosive’ decaying impulse. It proves to be a ‘reversed pizzicato’, as it were (Figures 7 and 8). (In 1958, when listening to my teacher Luigi Nono’s tapes in his house, I found myself with a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s voice in my hands. Assuming that it was a two-sided tape, I copied both the front and back sides. I found myself listening, unsuspectingly and full of reverence, to the backward-speaking voice of a hoarse/ happy6 Schoenberg telling stories in what sounded to me like a ‘foreign tongue’, full of ‘fantastic excitement’ thanks to the tearing-off effect of the reversal of the original plosives. . .) The singular ‘key moment’, where the mutually contrasted playing techniques meet each other, takes place in mm. 183 – 184. Here the crescendoing up-bow is unmuted: it has been freed through a lasciar vibrare indication and creates a minor second with the pizzicato of the violin’s open string (Figure 9). This moment could be the musical core, so to speak, the ‘magnetic North Pole’ for the movement from the flautato to the pizzicato located antipodally on this soundglobe (Klang-Globus). The true ‘formal core’—the ‘geographical’ pole—is, by contrast, where in the course of the aforementioned sequence-projections the single tones of a G major sixth chord, widely spaced in an outstretched ‘arpeggio’, are apotheosized and become de-tonalized through extreme spatial and temporal expanses: ‘sequence’, ‘arpeggio’ and a physically articulated structure in one (Figure 10). The pizzicato landscape that opens up at the same time consists of a wide spectrum of variants. (These events are foreshadowed from the first bar forward, in the form of a flautato field constantly counterpointed with or interpenetrated by single impulses

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Figure 8 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 26, mm. 143 – 144. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

Figure 9 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, pp. 32 –33, mm. 183 – 184. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

Figure 10 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, pp. 38 – 39, mm. 221 – 224. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


Contemporary Music Review 67 like legno battuto dots, extremely short bowings, attacks with a struck or briefly pressed bow, partially crystallized in square, often dotted rhythms. At the same time, these are reconciled with the flautando gesture and the hierarchy oriented around it through an increasing saltando presence and the related short hints of tremolo. Nevertheless they also already hint at the pizzicato gesture that will later take the upper hand.) The pizzicato variants themselves: their diversity and the forms of their conjunction make them virtually impossible to illustrate adequately, except through the score itself. As undamped octave and twelfth harmonics (Figure 11a), they are closely related to the equally reverberant bowed harmonics. Legno battuto (Figure 11b) and pressed (Figure 11c) accents function as boundary forms. Double sounds are formed through the coupling of strings in front of and behind the bridge (Figure 11d), simultaneities on the first and fourth strings at the interval of the double octave (Figure 11e), and even the pianississimo placement of the screw of the bow onto open strings—so that both halves of the string sound equally (Figure 11f)—or simply as double-stopped minor seconds (Figure 11g). Arco actions act here more and more as foreign bodies (Fremdko¨rper) or, at most, serve to prolong resonance artificially. After measure 280 the bows are set aside. The string quartet has become an imaginary ‘guitar’ with varying planes of strings: Salut fu¨r Caudwell7 sends its regards. Simultaneities strummed with plectrums create, hocket-style, a composite gesture. Eight styles of left-hand grip are rhythmically dovetailed with each other, giving the thus-created ‘super-sequence’ a structural profile (Figure 12). Finally, with the arrival of the sound of four open strings, and fully with the doubling and quadrupling thereof, one encounters ‘subtraction sounds’ (Subtraktionskla¨ngen), which remain from the heretofore six-voice texture through a partial damping of the strings, as if they had been filtered (Figure 13). At the end, the tutti open-string sound, distorted in the meantime through the ‘extreme scordatura’—before its broadly rhythmicized repetition gets stuck to the point of unrecognizability—issues from itself an expansive six-note ‘song’ (Gesang), in that after each ripping attack a different string is allowed to resonate undamped: the last form to appear of that ‘meta-melodic’ category, about which the talk in this piece was of a ‘sequence built through hocket’ (hoquetisch gebildeter Sequenz) (Figure 14). The Battered Time-Net ‘Structure: polyphony of arrangements’ (Struktur: Polyphonie von Anordnungen): my old definition—always at hand since the typology of sound I established in the 1960s, in which sound and form, sensory and spiritual experience meet and interpenetrate in the double concept of sound-structure/structure-sound (Klangstruktur/Strukturklang)—can be used seamlessly in a more precise analysis of the beginning of Reigen: arrangements of flautato bowings, impulse families, restless gestures (saltando/



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Figure 11 Reduction of II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, pp. 40 – 43, 48, mm. (a) 231, (b) 239, (c) 245, (d) 236, (e) 280, (f) 246, (g) 241. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.



Figure 12 (a) Strings stopped at a distance of a minor sixth, or consonant stops. (b) Natural-harmonic finger pressure (second and third overtones). (c) Random harmonics, as resonant as possible, through ad libitum touching (‘relying on luck’) and rhythmicized release of the strings in the area above the fourth partial. (d) Stopping unidentifiable pitches through ‘tearing’ right at the bridge. (e) Tight grip, as high as possible. (f) Strings behind the bridge. (g) Open strings. Note: The dotted brackets around the violin clef refer to the ‘extreme scordatura’, which permits, despite the precise notation of the fingering, no exact definition of the resulting pitches.

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tremolo), and so on overlay each other and work together. They thus fit into the timearticulating (zeitartikulierenden) particulars of a net8 previously generated for the entire work: a net of extremely aperiodic pulses, traveling alongside as if from underground, the measurements of the whole pre-compositionally regulated, that in the score is notated above the instrumental parts as a ‘rhythmic frame’. (The pitches notated there, which owe themselves to easily traced 12-tone permutations, exist simply for a possible verification of the generating principle. Musically, they play no role.) The sonic events placed in this ‘net’, however, become ‘unwieldy’ in the course of the piece. Their internal rhythmic structure rips out their stitches as if from within. And where that ‘hocket sequence’ forms, crystallizing entirely into a plastic rhythm, the net has finally become almost totally nonfunctional; it demarcates only general temporal areas. For that reason, from measure 280ff. of the score, its presentation along the upper staff is abandoned. Instead, in that space appears merely the total rhythm resulting from the complementary cooperation of the played gestures. They crystallize temporarily into a quasi-Waltz (mm. 240 – 241). These rhythmic gestures, further expanded, finally form in the ‘epilogue’ the latent temporal skeleton for the end of the piece: the ‘internal rhythm’ has therefore become the structural net: ‘regression’ toward the close, which originates at the beginning. . . (Figure 15). Just such a simplification of the structural construction can be discerned as an (intermediary) product of a perpetual spatial idea of time, in which events occur successively and are homogeneously constructed to merge melodically and rhythmically, but finally form not a succession but a mutually completing attraction: an arpeggio in an imaginary universal sound/space/field [Gesamt-Klang/GesamtRaum/Gesamt-Feld], branching out on various scales. (In such pieces as Ein Kinderspiel 9 and Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied,10 above all in the Siciliano of the latter, there exists a relative of this type of structure, ‘reduced’ in complexity, which through that reduction has been given room for the aura11 of the sounds—thus bringing more intricate complexities—e.g. quoted materials—into play.)



Figure 14 II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, pp. 58 – 59, mm. 344 – 351. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


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Figure 15 II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, pp. 52 – 53, mm. 303 – 314. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

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Harmony/Scordatura—and a Glance at the Epilogue In principle, harmony ‘reigns’ where tones form the music. But overall, where pitches become unit particles in cooperation with other sonic categories, it must be defined in their context. Even when strongly controlled intervallically, harmony can distort— i.e it can sabotage an expanded musical perception (. . .Which is stronger: C major or pizzicato?. . .). The tone rows in Reigen, fixed at the beginning from the complete 12 notes of the scale on the one hand, and from constantly and/or continuously widening or narrowing interval fields on the other (Figures 16a and b), become more and more infiltrated with sounds along the lines of ‘artificial natural noises’ (ku¨nstlichem Naturlaut), that is to say of the unique sound of the ‘apparatuses’ (Gera¨te): among these are the sound of the open strings along with their harmonic spectra, the sound of the strings behind the bridge, but also all the sounds and noises (Kla¨nge und Geraüsche) that are suppressed in the extremely cultivated technique of the performance of pitches and other ‘natural sounds’: the toneless string noise, the complex sonic edifices of strings heavily pressed either above or behind the bridge, the muffled-string sound, the noise of a legno battuto attack distilled through a damping grip, can all be brought into relation. The echo of a pizzicato octave harmonic, depending on the particular tuning, thus belongs with the toneless noise of bowing on the scroll. The harmony that was previously often incidentally weighed down by such a connection, its ‘tonality’, becomes the unforced natural presence of the sonic body, prescribed by the external mechanical/physical conditions of the structure of the instrument. In the case of Reigen, that ‘nature’ is manipulated beforehand, as if ‘prepared’, through the scordatura given at the beginning and its transformations (Figure 17). On them is based the unique sound of the 16-string ‘super-instrument’. Such a chromatic setup allows the occasional quid pro quo game between ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ harmony. Most of the ‘sequences’, right in the middle of Reigen, present themselves as artfully organized, but in fact simply collect under a particular technical sonic aspect the pitch repertoire that has been standing at the ready (Figure 18). In the aforementioned large field of overlaid harmonic glissandi (mm. 96 – 110), the ‘artificial’ natural harmonics must help out where the open strings do not include all chromatic steps—like dummy glissandi played over fictional open strings by the hand; figures that, for their part, fit in not merely in imitation, but rather ‘break formation’ and bring into play their own interval constellations, differing from the ‘nature’ that is imitated. In measure 117, the basic sound is ‘manipulated’ anew: an ‘artificial scordatura’ is temporarily established: the players hold quadruple stops that complement each other chromatically—just like the open strings themselves. Thus, they form an artificial ‘keyboard’ for flautato actions tied to larger-scale gestures (‘supersequences’. . .) (Figure 19).



Figure 16a II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 1, mm. 1 – 5. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.


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Figure 16a II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 1, mm. 1 – 5. # 1989, Breitkopf & ¨ rtel, 16b Ha Figure Wiesbaden. Pitch structure at the opening.

Figure 17 Initial scordatura.


From measure 296, the music, the touched-upon sounds always differently filtered, bangs its head against the wall of this scordatura. But by itself, the strike of a fist against the keyboard of a well-tempered keyboard can produce nothing but diatonic or pentatonic clusters. And one can hiss as



Figure 19 ‘Artificial scordatura’ through fixed harmonic-pressure left-hand positions.

violently as one likes into a harmonica: nothing will emerge but a pre-programmed C major triad. From this point in Reigen, the established pitch frameworks (Tonho¨hen-Rahmen) renew themselves through the ‘extreme scordatura’ set up in the course of performance. Each player has here a different, freely determined time to detune the strings of his instrument wildly, i.e. by no particular distance, by which means each string will be assigned a different interval, so that from here as few fifthrelationships as possible lie behind the music. Then, on this no longer controllable gamut of 16 ‘hopelessly detuned’ strings— ‘transformed’ by arco con sordino—the Epilogue takes its course. Of all the reminiscences that it celebrates under varying conditions (among which the sloweddown tremolo movement sends a greeting in the direction of Gran Torso), the evocation of the originally so delicately produced flautato undergoes the most conspicuous transformation: since the obligatory bow motion between bridge and fingerboard described at the beginning is now performed with pressed bow, the noise component’s brightness changes, which came through subtly, at most, beforehand, here come to light as gently rattling pitch glissandi: downwardly or upwardly directed, based on whether the damping grip stops the deepened and thus drowned-out area of the strings or not (Figure 20). Measure 374, which consists of alternating, overlapping downward glissandi in the two violins, can be repeated ad libitum, theoretically ad infinitum. It is the point that is reached somewhere in almost all of my compositions, sometimes more than once: where the music pauses—in a ‘sounding fermata’—and an ostinato passage either loses or finds itself before it ‘continues’. It is the moment in mountain climbing where one takes a deep breath and surveys the horizon: its intensity is unexplainable without the effort leading up to it. The dynamic time of this ‘traversal’ (Begehens) is something different from the static, timeless time of the traversed landscape itself. These two times interpenetrate: music in search of non-music. But not a magic that


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Figure 20 II. Streichquartett, ‘Reigen seliger Geister’, p. 62, mm. 366 – 371. # 1989, Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel, Wiesbaden.

seeks to master perception, rather an open space that ‘takes it captive’, in order to show it where it has freed itself—where it may free itself. Notes [1] [2]

Round of the Blessed Spirits. Translator’s note: I have endeavored wherever possible to retain Lachenmann’s often idiosyncratic punctuation and sentence structure (including several incomplete sentences); however, commas and dashes have been added and modified where necessary to aid readability in English. All quotation marks and ellipses, however, are to be found in the original. I have given the German originals at the first appearance of words and phrases for which that information strikes me as useful, either because the word or phrase is integral to Lachenmann’s technical vocabulary and is used systematically (e.g. Geraüsch and SuperSequenz), or because their usage in German seems idiosyncratic and singular in a way that is not easily captured in translation (e.g. the many different words used to describe the string quartet: ensemble, apparatus, device, etc.). As explained in notes 8 and 11, Lachenmann uses italics only for work titles and for one occurrence each of the two words net and aura, to which occurrences those footnotes are attached. I have also set Italian musical terms in italics that are invariably my own. The article is noteworthy not only for the detailed information it provides on the formal construction of Lachenmann’s second string quartet, but also for what it does not provide. The near-total lack (other than a few tantalizing titbits) of specifics regarding the pitch and rhythmic organization of the piece, in comparison to the detailed taxonomies of different sonic vocabularies and playing techniques, is an interesting reflection


[3]


[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

not necessarily of Lachenmann’s compositional priorities but of his willingness to address them to a public audience—and thus, perhaps, his own estimation of their originality, or of the importance of their analysis to the understanding of his work. All footnotes, unless otherwise marked, are my own. Editor’s note: Here Lachenmann’s recollection is slightly in error. His first quartet had been started 18 years and finished 17 years before Reigen. Written in 1968/1969 and 1970/1971 respectively. Written in 1969/1970. Heiser/heiter, an odd and difficult-to-translate pun. A work for two guitars (and speaking by both musicians) from 1977. Italics in the original—one of only two usages of italics used in the original other than work titles. A set of seven small piano pieces written in 1980. For amplified string quartet and large orchestra, written in 1979/1980. The other usage of italics; see note 8.

Reference Lachenmann, H. (1996). Commentary on the Zweites Streichquartett (‘Reigen seliger Geister’) (1989). In J. Haüsler (Ed.), Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. Schriften 1966 – 1995 (p. 399). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Ha¨rtel.

On My Second String Quartet-Helmut Lachenmann .pdf

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